ThejacKmp

What do you base this on? Tell us more? Or is this just a guess? Because then I guess he wins the Cy Young as a closer in 2018 and its just as valid! Plenty of guys have Dean's track record and become useful major league relievers who sign long term contracts or even go to the Hall of Fame. No one is saying he's going to actually make the Hall but to say his upside is cup-of-coffee is ludicrous. Plenty of failed AAAA starters have become very good relievers with spiking K/9 rates. Dean has a fastball which sits in the low-to-mid 90s so if he adds 2-3MPH pitching in shorter stints (not everyone does this but many do) he may be able to join that number. He also throws four pitches as a starter so concentrating on just 2 or 3 may also help him in short stints. Dean also does not profile as a LOOGY since he has relatively decent splits (in 2015 LH hit .218 off him and RH hit .269). In fairness, he did give up all ten HRs to righties so there may be some slugging issues but increased velocity and not throwing four pitches might help with that and it isn't like righties are hitting .310 off him so its a decent omen of potential success. (Couldn't find better stats there but they don't DQ him by any means). Pat Dean is intriguing which is not surprising - by definition, most successful AAA starters (especially lefties) are interesting as relief candidates. For sure no guarantees but there is a lot of potential there.

Ha. Glen Perkins K/9 as a starter was in the mid to low 4s but jumped to 10 in the pen. Liam Hendricks went form around 6.0 to around 10.0. Mariano Rivera was in the mid 6s and then jumped to 8.0-9.0 as a reliever. To look at the other side, Mike Pelfrey's went from 5.1 to 3.9. Point is, we have no idea what Pat Dean the reliever will look like but to say he won't be able to strike people out is crazy. His K/9 has been around 5.0.

I would assume that the Twins have thoughts of turning Pat Dean into a relief pitcher, ala Taylor Rogers. His K rate is low but that can take a big jump when moved to relief (see another converted lefty starter named Perkins, his jumped like crazy). He's a lefty, which of course makes him more rare/valuable. The Twins likely see something in him that might translate well to the pen. His upside is not spot starter, it's likely "left handed set-up guy." That's not insignificant. You can like Jones a lot and I agree that his K rate is great. It'll be interesting to see if Milwaukee can keep him, he's super raw. But don't minimize the value of converting successful AAAA starters to relief, it can make for some very valuable players. The Twins have spent years looking at both guys, it's kind of naïve to think you can sit at a computer and know better unless the thing is way more obvious than this.

It's like trying to compare Babe Ruth to Barry Bonds. Two totally different things. You write Jones off because he struggled at AA in a short stint. You say fail but failure only happens if no lessons are learned. Buxton struggled at AA at first but learned from his mistakes and mastered the level. I wouldn’t call the struggles failure, I’d call them learning. Zach Jones is young and has a good track record. He very well could be a very nice relief pitcher. Dave, on the other hand, dismisses John Hicks, comparing a pitcher to a catcher. A catcher is way more valuable and Hicks is only 25 with just a cup of coffee at the major league level. The Twins see something in him they think can be useful down the line. So they’re not crazy to prioritize him if they see some potential. I’m just saying we can’t compare the two so easily based on stats and numbers. They play wildly different positions, are at different places in their careers and their potential is unrealized.

The real thing here too is that we have no idea what the trade deadline will look like. IF the Twins have a log jam at the break (no one gets injured, Park is good, Buxton seizes CF, Plouffe has a good season and Kepler is chomping at the bit to be in the majors), that’s a great problem to have. And if any of those don’t happen (e.g. injuries or Park struggling or Mauer bottoming out) they have a nice insurance policy with Plouffe all year. The Twins also can likely get a similar deal to what they’d get right now at the trade deadline and perhaps something even better – if there’s a contender at the deadline with a hole at 3B or the need for a right handed bat, they will likely be willing to pay more than they are now. Unless the Twins can get a great package for Plouffe, there’s no reason not to keep him. Having too many guys is not the worst problem and there's a solid chance Trevor is just as valuable or even more valuable at the deadline.

Hicks is not a Gold Glove defensive player. He has never won a Gold Glove and would not be considered for it this year. He also has some upside but I would not call it a TON. He has hit for about 2 months at the major league level and struggles mightily against righties (70% of at bats are against righties). He has potential but was by no means an elite prospect. John Ryan Murphy is not a backup catcher. He a young prospect catcher who looks to split time with Suzuki before eventually taking over the job full time. He's not going to be Joe Mauer but most teams don't have that. He seems like he has a decent chance to be an average catcher who is under team control for 6 years and maybe has some upside to be more than that. That's not insignificant. Hold off on saying that Sano can't play OF and handing out grades. The Twins can cover a lot for him with Buxton and Rosario and you never know how a guy will play out there. Cuddy was never amazing but he was smart and had a good enough arm to mitigate some of the range out there. There's just too many unknowns to go around throwing out final judgments. No one knows if Park will translate to MLB (in which case Sano can DH and Arcia/Kepler will in OF), if Sano can play a passable OF (in which case they have a stacked lineup), if everyone will be healthy (right now the Twins can take an injury at 1B, 3B, DH and OF and not miss a beat - that's a nice thing!) or how Molitor will handle days off (there's room to minimize Sano in the OF with regular days off for Park, Plouffe and Mauer). The fact is that Plouffe gets you nothing useful now so you might as well keep him and deal with the nice problem of having a surplus of guys you want to play. Have we all forgotten Jason Tyner? Remember the Tyner! Remember the Tyner!

They like Hicks. You don't. They've been scouting him for a long time and see something useful in him. He's only 25. I'm siding with the Twins on this one but you're more than likely to be proven right.

Catchers are different than pitchers. Pretty hard to compare them no matter which way you go on it. Jones is a relief pitcher who did well in high A ball and struggled in AA. Hard to see him on the Twins this year and unlikely he's ready until far into 2017. I like his K rate too but it's not the catastrophic loss you're painting it to be.

Nunez has hit better than Santana and if he can't play short, Danny offers no real upside over Nunez besides playing CF (where the Twins are pretty well set). If Santana had options left we'd have him in the minors. Nunez is around because anything can happen in spring training. Reality is that the Twins were going to keep a 3rd catcher on the 40 man roster regardless. They always have. So if it wasn't Hicks it would be someone else. Hicks is only 25 and has some limited upside. I prefer him to the Herrmanns and Fryers who we know won't turn into anything. Fien is a better argument but he's not a terrible arm to have in the pen - you just don't want to depend on him. Fien had a 117 ERA+ last year and is two years removed from a 10.6 K/9. He's not elite and who knows if he can get back to that but maybe the Twins see something in him? We may still get Jones back. He's still got to make the Brewers team and stick all year long. A few injuries are all it takes for that to no longer be worth it to them. This seems like a pretty good scenario for the Twinkies. Michael wasn't taken and all they lost was a right handed arm that was nowhere near ML ready and is pretty redundant in the organization. It'd be great if we didn't lose Jonesy but still a pretty good outcome for the Twins.

What he said. Particularly the service-time consideration aspect. Max Kepler is 22 years old, by delaying until May you likely get an extra season of team control at 28-29, in his prime. The only reason to risk that would be if he makes the team as a starting outfielder – the difference between Kepler and Robinson as 4th OF for two months is not even a win. While I enjoy a lot of the author’s material, he’s dead wrong saying that the Twins need to be laser focused on winning in 2016. This is a Twins team set up to compete for 5-7 years, not one set up to compete only in 2016. We are not the Tigers. We are NOT the Tigers. That’s not to say we need to play the rebuilding game – just that we still have to weigh the benefits now versus the costs in the future. Kepler as 4th OF is too little benefit now and too much potential cost later. The same might be true of Berrios in the rotation too.

Especially had to hide when you think about those inevitable times when a few guys are banged up and need a day. It really reverberates down your roster to have a bench guy you don't really want to play. Michael will be fine.

They did trade for a second reliever, Neil Cotts. You may not like that trade but they did get a second guy.

I enjoy that the game was quoted in Mountain Standard Time. You see people talk about EST or PST and even "central" but I can honestly say I don't think I've ever seen someone say things in terms of MST. I'm going to start doing this.

I have a clear understanding of FIP and a working understanding of fWAR and dollar valuations (they’re not very complicated and you come across as really really patronizing BTW) but that’s not what you and I were talking about, that’s what you were talking about with other people. I was talking to you narrowly about the depth of the Twins farm system, other ways to spend that money and the bogus way you were trying to exclude certain players. None of that involved FIP or fWAR so I didn’t engage on that level. Silencing those who disagree with you is the tool of the despot but I’ll bow out. Someday you can have a discussion with yourself and guarantee everyone will agree with you.

This is pretty dubious throughout. Both League and Broxton fit Cameron’s profile of non-closers as both have been setup men shortly before and shortly after signing their deals. Broxton signed a $4 million deal in the offseason of 2011-2012 with the Royals. He closed for them in 2012 and then moved to Cincy at the deadline where he was a setup man who closed four games in mid-September when Chapman was getting some rest. That offseason he signed the deal that Cameron is taking about, a 4 year $30 million deal. He saved no games in 2013 (not sure where you got the Broxton was signed to close thing, the team played with it in spring training but named Chapman closer two weeks before the season started - it was never really in doubt, Chapman said he wanted to close and was resistant to starting) and had seven saves in 2014 while again filling in due to injury. I don’t see how you exclude his contract, which has seen him shift to and from three teams while providing 1 WAR in three years. He was a former closer but has served primarily as a set-up man since the traded deadline before he signed the contract. If he’d been a true closer, he wouldn’t have resigned with the Reds where he clearly was going to have little-to-no chance to close. Brandon League signed a 3 year/$22 million contract in 2013 with the Dodgers. He’d already lost his closer job with the Mariners in 2012 and became closer for the Dodgers after the deadline by default after Jansen had an irregular heartbeat. He quickly lost the job back to Jansen the next year and has been a mediocre setup man ever since (-0.8 WAR so far, missed the entire 2015 season). Another guy it’s hard to call a true closer since he signed his deal with a team that did not offer him the closing job. Cameron is fine to include him. As for Fujikawa, he was being paid $4.5 million a year. That’s not a “gamble”, teams don’t just throw that kind of money at guys they don’t expect to be key members of the bullpen. If you read articles from the time of the signing, his expected role was to set up Marmol, be the 8th inning guy. Ten other teams made runs at Fujikawa, suggesting he was not some guy who could only latch on to a bottom feeder. He was a serious free agent signing who backfired and to suggest otherwise is preposterous. I don’t see how you can in good faith try to mess with the scale on this one by selectively excluding guys. They were signed as setup men, none of them was given a sure-fire closer job.

No one is claiming Cameron is infallible – all anyone is saying is he’s a respected writer for a respected website so his conclusion bears some weight. We can disagree all you want about the exact definition of 0 WAR players but in the end, they’re not the kind of guys you want pitching for your team, certainly not on multiple year contracts. Who cares how high or low the FIP is? All that does is highlight Cameron’s point – bullpen performance has incredible variance and is very difficult to predict making free agent contracts in the pen incredibly risky. I really disagree about the farm system too. Jake Reed, JT Chargois, Alex Meyer and Nick Burdi are all exciting arms entering the upper levels of the Twins farm system. That doesn’t even count guys like Tonkin and Oliveros who should be competing for bullpen jobs this spring. Most of that first list likely won’t be on the opening day roster but they all have the potential to be forcing their way up onto the roster during the season, especially with the way a lot of them have been performing in the AFL. If you sign the 3/15 contracts you want to sign, those guys likely don’t get a shot. Most teams are loathe to cut bait on a struggling guy if he’s signed for the next few years –veteran pitchers with money on the books get a chance to ride things out. I’d hate to see cheap young guys blocked by an aging vet who is underperforming. That’s the beauty of the one-year contracts and the minor league deals for fallen prospects. The Twins can evaluate them in spring training, see who sticks and it’s easy to cut bait if the farm system does well. Why wouldn’t we want to maintain flexibility, especially since there is such high risk with longer contracts for relievers? You make some nice points around this topic but they seem like nitpicking and don’t really address that the Twins are not in a place where they need those arms. With Jepsen, Perkins and perhaps two guys who don’t make the rotation, the Twins really only have 3 spots to fill. They don’t need to remake the entire pen, they just need to retool its back end. They have plenty of interesting internal options and can augment that with some low-risk flexible one-year deals and minor league contracts. A long term deal for a reliever runs a strong risk of being a waste of money that cripples flexibility and targets spending on an inefficient area where the Twins have strong internal candidates.

Can you explain where you think his point isn’t proven? The original source is a very well-respected source and the author did a nice update job by showing the few successes and many failures of the free agent relief pitching market since then. I don’t see where you say that the point wasn’t proven. Yes, he didn’t look at other strategies and investments but basically, signing high-priced free agent relievers is so risky with so little bang for the buck that almost anything would be better. The Twins have had demonstrable success investing money in the international prospect scene, they have a bevy of high upside arms coming up the pipeline and they’re not rebuilding an entire pen – with Jepsen, Perkins and likely May/Milone/other starter, they’re really just looking for 3 guys or so to fill out the back end of the pen. The author’s point that big contract free agent relievers are iffy at best is pretty solid; trusting the young arms and getting some lower priced free agents on 1 year deals seems like the best way to preserve roster flexibility in upcoming years while investing the money in a bunch of prospects (international or shifting through the waste of other organizations) will better help bolster the pen in 3-5 years.

I'm not saying give them a bullpen spot on the MLB squad. Give them a shot in spring training and if anyone looks good keep them, otherwise send them to Rochester to work on it. It will take time but the Twins literally have nothing to lose by trying this. Remember the Perkins. Logan Darnell's fastball sits at 91-93 range and Pat Dean sits in the low 90s. If you add a couple of MPH you have a decent middle reliever speed. Especially since they are lefties and outside of the closer, the Twins are bereft of good left handed relievers. Another factor is that relief pitchers don't throw four pitches. Settling down to 2, maybe 3 pitches can help improve any of these guys too.

I think the point of the article was that that is exactly the kind of investment that frequently pays no dividends. That money could be better spent signing extensions, in the international pool, on posting fees or bringing in a bunch of minor league free agents to see who sticks. Signing a reliever on a 3/15 deal is super iffy. You're likely flushing that money away.

Erroneous. Logan Darnell's K9 in the MLB was 8.2 and is consistently above 7.0 in the upper minors. In the minors, Taylor Rogers sits around 6.5 while Pat Dean is around 5.0. That doesn't take into consideration the jump in strikeouts one would imagine when they throw harder as they shift into a relief role. For comparison's sake, as a major league starter Glen Perkins averaged 4.3 K/9 and now averages 9.3. Mariano Rivera jumped from 6.8 to 8.3. For non-stars you see Anthony Swarzak jumping from 4.9 to 5.9 or Liam Hendriks jumping from 5.4 to 10.1. I'm not saying that these three guys will automatically jump like Rivera or a Perkins (Pelfrey actually dropped from 5.1 to 3.9) but their K rates are within the range that you could see them become swing-and-miss pitchers. These three serve no real purpose to the Twins as starters, it's time to see if they are more Hendriks or more Swarzak. If just one of them became a very good reliever that would be huge for the team. And again, we're not asking them to become elite relievers with elite K rates, we're saying that these guys could become good decent middle relief prospects. They would also be cheap, as the Twins would control them for years to come at a low cost. There's no reason not to try it - the Twins lost out on Liam Hendriks during a period they weren't competitive because they didn't push all failed starters into the pen. Lets not make that mistake again.

The Twins have such an overabundance of back of the rotation starters, it's time to start converting some of those guys to relievers. Logan Darnell, Taylor Rogers, Pat Dean - these guys are unlikely to get a chance starting in the bigs so it's time to see what they can do in shorter stints. If the Twins can't unload Ricky Nolasco, it's time to see what he can do from the pen too. I'd also like to see the Twins go after the veteran guys who don't profile as starters anymore - I hate to use the P word but the Pelfreys. These guys are unlikely to start in the majors again but a guy like Pelfrey could be a nice middle reliever out of the pen. The nice thing for the Twins is that they have two of the three 8th and 9th inning guys you need* in Jepsen and Perkins so they don't need dominance, just guys who can soak up those innings between starters and the elite pen arms. * Note that I'm being realistic - as much as we'd like to see Perkins used in the 6th with the bases loaded, it's not going to happen. So we have to think like Molly with 8th and 9th inning guys. Sadly.

I like this guy and wreitup but have to disagree that the low walks in independent ball tell us anything. Against lesser competition he may just be able to blow the ball by guys. He may be facing guys who can't really hit breaking balls. His pedigree and track record are bigger signifiers. Go Twins!

is Also, I was looking at the stats for that time because I don't really remember Plouffe's outfield experiments (there were a lot of things in Twins Territory back then which I blocked out). He made one error and had three assists in 30 games, the latter of which speaks of a pretty good arm or guys running on him like crazy. His range was below average but not too far away from Cuddy's when he first started - and that was being thrown to the wolves with no time in the minors or spring training at the position. Plouffe is a bit older but you would think with some time working on it in spring training he might be a passable outfielder. Same thing with Mauer really. It just seems like they should be working Plouffe (and Mauer) out there along with Sano. Keep your options open and what not.

Some things should not be said and no emoji will make them okay. Not even the poop emoji. Not even the poop emoji.

Oh I hope not. I cant see Plouffe being much better than Sano and Trevor is the better 3Bman. But it does provide another option.