ashbury

The player is never a commodity. But the contract for his services? A FO has to think in hardnosed terms. Every player with a long career acknowledges at some point, it's a business. For me the long-term commitment was always the biggest concern, and the 10-year offer previously on the table by the Twins looks unwise to me in light of the newer information. Knock 3 years at $20M per off of their offer, leading to a higher AAV, and invite him to take it or leave it if he's got a better total dollar offer somewhere else. Before, $285M total contract value was close to an insult given the reality that someone would offer $300+. Things change and now $225M seems like a legitimate offer, whether it wins or loses. Maybe the Mets fool me, but after this many days/weeks I doubt their disagreement is over a "mere" $50M relative to their previous winning offer.

It's a great idea but I'm not sure the Bosox are the right target. The challenge is to find an aging veteran who is 1) still good, 2) highly paid, 3) on a not-very-long remaining contract, 4) on a team that isn't under pressure to contend. Boston can't really wave a white flag for 2023, even if expectations aren't terribly high. Sale otherwise checks the necessary boxes, but I just don't see how discarding someone of value can play with their fan base. Cubs and Stroman? Not sure what that team's intentions really are.

That must have been it. None of the online sources I saw mentioned anything in terms of business days, but what else could it be.

And then do the opposite, right?

Ceiling? Major-league starting-caliber center fielder. He turns 24 in a few weeks so there is still room to reach that tier, but he needs to improve both at bat and on defense, whether at St Paul for part of 2023 or in the majors. I would not entertain trade offers lightly on him - up the middle talent is too scarce and is difficult to acquire, as witnessed by the price we paid to get him.

I'm afraid of the metaphor for banging trashcans.

Designated for assignment, you mean? I didn't see further news of a release. DFA could be a precursor to a trade, but likely will just be passing him through waivers in hopes to keep him. That does mean risking losing him, if some other team wants to devote a 40-man spot to a pitcher not especially close to major-league ready.

I feel the need to pump the brakes on Emmanuel Rodriguez's breakout year at single-A. His numbers seem to be built on an other-worldly ability to draw walks. Walks are good, but at single-A there's a chance he's just figured out how to exploit young pitchers' inability to throw strikes on demand. Nobody has an OBP .200 higher than his BA on a sustainable basis. What will happen to him against more advanced pitchers next year? Specifically, will the "excess" walks that are no longer available to him turn into base hits? Or into outs? His batting average was an okay .272, so I don't see a pattern of "if you throw him strikes he hits it, if you don't then he walks." I look for major regression in his batting stats in 2023 with a hope he proves me wrong.

I don't understand the sequence of events. Ortega was DFA by the Angels on December 22. That was more than 2 weeks ago. I thought DFA lasted for 10 days, sometime within which 3-day waivers must be started and completed, unless the intention is to simply release him or make some other move. How is it that the Twins claimed him now?

This is a signing that a bottom-feeder team makes. I'm starting to think that's all the Twins aspire to, so, sure, why not. No. Yes. I don't care at the moment.

Can't help feeling that if any of these three guys are actual upgrades (anymore at this stage of their respective careers), we might as well hold a fire sale of our current players with short remaining team control and commence with a full rebuild.

I'll beat the rush and start missing Brooks Lee now! And I already miss Connor Prielipp since I don't think he pitched an inning in 2022.

I didn't see that one before. It's a fun one!

Good analysis. I'd be unhappy with a major-league commitment to Castro, but he's not so old that he can't find that one last tweak to his game that makes him a viable major-leaguer, so let him devote 2023 in St Paul to that, and see what happens. Welcome, Willi, and I never thought I'd say that.

You're right, that's not very realistic. You can't improve on our Pitching Pipeline™.

I wish they would go back to playing the 7 other teams 22 times each season. 1961 ruined everything.

My freshman English teacher might look at that same sentence and deduct half a grade due to the mixed metaphors.

57 games? Pffft. Big deal. Emilio Pagan all by himself attended 59 games. (58 of which were losses, going strictly from memory.) Seriously, kudos on the season summary from up-close.

"State of the Art Analytical Market Research Concludes that One, and only One, Satire Writer Needed at TD." The next RandBalls Stu headline.

Finally! A strategy we all can endorse. Easy peasy!

I'm quibbling only on a side comment, but for me the Berrios trade was all about SWR, and Martin was the necessary sweetener. Pitching is the coin of the realm in MLB and if you continually trade your pitching talent for hitters you'll always be standing at the train station wondering how you missed the express yet again. I'd have preferred two pitching prospects in return for 1.5 years of Berrios control but evidently Toronto stood firm. If SWR flops, which is the risk for any prospect, I don't care about Martin unless he turns into the next Jose Altuve or similar. The "new" FO has been in charge since the 2016-17 off-season. So this is now their seventh go-round. FA signings are always needed, but it's time for some results on young controllable difference-makers to be the basis of sustainable success. The two pitchers you named are as good as any if that success is to occur.

RandBalls Stu draws his share of earnest rebuttals from readers who don't recognize the satire, which ironically is one hallmark of good satire. Another important trait of satire is picking worthy targets, never "punching down." His weekly series never fails to disappoint his most ardent critics.* * Yeah, I like to try a deadpan humorous turn of phrase now and then too, but not at his level.

Just remember "Coulombe's Lawe" from that Physics class you loved in high school, and you'll be fine.

Gauging injury risk is a thorny problem. I have a suspicion that some teams' analytics staffs have made greater progress than others, in working out a rubric for placing players into one bucket or another in terms of injury risk. The way you phrased it here sounds like there is only "injured" and "not injured," or at least that's what you think people here are asking for. I think everyone accepts that injury is a part of every player's life at some point. But as you go on to say, some pitchers do log 30 starts. Figuring out a way to improve your odds of locating those guys is not the same as demanding totally accurate prediction. Not trading for players with an injury history means sorting into two buckets, red and green for stop and go respectively. Instead, if you have buckets labeled 20% injury risk (there being no such thing as 0%), 40%, 60%, 80%, and 95% (with 100% almost certainly meaning "retired"), you'd have an edge over teams with poorer assessment. Possibly there are much finer-grained ways of sorting risk than that, across multiple dimensions rather than simply ever-smaller ranges of percentages. And at the time of the trade, I was looking at Mahle as an 60%er or maybe an 80%er. A lot of us were. I don't think Monday-morning quarterbacking is involved. However, guessing on one player certainly isn't the same as having a professional level of forecasting firepower. Still that's what I do expect of our professional FO. And they disappointed when acquiring Paddack, Mahle, and (for me) even Sonny Gray, not to mention Archer and Bundy who everyone understood would need to be handled with extreme care.