ashbury

It's Spring Training. That* is a given, for every veteran trying to re-establish himself. * the choice of phrase

If THAT'S the new Moneyball, Ralph Kiner's heirs are going to be kind of miffed at missing out on the royalties. "Home run hitters drive Cadillacs, singles hitters drive Fords," dontcha know.

Please elaborate on this solution.

Weather could wind up playing a factor anyway, so I've already overthunk this one.

If true that ownership turned thumbs down on a higher bid that FalVine were comfortable with (which is only speculation on your part), it's entirely normal for ownership to have to sign off on a multi-year contract. Even if ownership is happy with the FO at the moment, that could change in a couple years' time, and any bad contracts lasting for longer would be an impediment to hiring someone new and good enough to be in demand. It's possible ownership would have to eat some of the remaining liabilities on the books, or else they would only get the most desperate candidates to apply. So yeah, they get to be "in charge" of payroll, at this level.

With 6 days between starts for the first go-round, and 5 days for the second, I could see going with a four-man rotation all the way twice through, meaning no need for a fifth starter until Lucky Friday April 13. Do they all need 6 days that second time? Did I count wrong?

Hope it doesn't turn into Wanderlust.

Since my comment garnered two dissents, I guess I should walk it back a little because I wasn't trying to say curveballs aren't good. It really was meant as almost a nothing-conclusion - I might have said, "looks deadly at this point, which is great to see. Time will tell." Which is not much different than any good prospect.

“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it, and stop there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well, but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.” ― Mark Twain

He's going to cost a lot of minor league batters their jobs. "Can't hit the good curve." Whether that translates into a job in the majors where batters can hit (or lay off of) the good curve, is of course what will decide things for him.

Didn't we just get done explaining how teams situated on a coast have a big advantage over us?

It reduces the salary, while at the same time reducing the upside of the contract. I thought we weren't trying to win the War-per-dollar Pennant.

It is not only a GOOD deal, it's probably the DESIRABLE outcome. I don't discount the value of buying yourself a chance at that. But it is only one (or a conglomeration of several) among the many possibilities, and it represents a multi-stage optimization under uncertainty. I'm repeating myself now, so I'll bow out of this tangent.

You're looking at the favorable coin flips only.

Your friendly neighborhood financial advisor would like to sell you some stock options, I bet.

Suppose the FO has crunched all the numbers on a 5-year contract for an over-30 player, and feels like it barely is acceptable. It includes a risk that the player's performance is bad in year 1, another risk that he's what they hoped for in year 1 but drops off the cliff in year 2, and so on and so forth. Lots of combinations, flips of the coin so to speak, adding up to about the value they are offering. Now, add an opt-out, and suppose 2 years later when the opt-out can be exercised that the player does indeed leave. That means, as we're all agreeing, that the team has done very well for itself and should be pleased with the return on investment so far. However, what has this new information, about 2 more years of performance, done to the computation of risks going forward? Almost certainly, it means that the risk of a sudden decline to worthlessness in year 3 has become reduced greatly, ditto the succeeding years. But the team doesn't get to reap the benefits of these flips of the coin. The player has walked. Those "good" coin flips were part of the original computation. Conversely if the player doesn't walk, the universe of outcomes relating to the remaining risks for years 3-5, respectively, have gone upward from the initial estimates. Because, if he doesn't walk, something bad has happened in years 1-2. All the "bad" coin flips remain on the club's debit sheet. The risk doesn't remain static. It changes as you see the actual outcomes. That's the flaw in the argument. It is the essence of the "heads I win, tails you lose" game, to the player's advantage. I have a hard time believing it's only a small difference in dollars. He can't earn less than $126M now, but if he does well for two years and the market goes nuts in some way (or just normalizes to what he thought he'd get), he could receive a lot more. And it leaves essentially unchanged the odds of the Cubs having to work around dead money, while reducing the positive value they potentially can receive from a mutually guaranteed contract instead. It helps the player, it costs the team. It probably puts the Cubs contract as an actuarial equivalent to, say, what a normal guaranteed $140M contract would bring him - close to what was originally forecast.

I'm sure the Twins front office will make the best of it, but there is simply nothing good about losing out on the chance to hire the best starting pitcher available, nor about losing several starts this season from a guy you are counting on. All of the "blessing in disguise" kinds of outcomes could happen at the expense of pitchers further down the pecking order.

What's your position on Yellow Labradors?

It's your thread. I guess you can thread-jack it if you wish.

I can't locate the date, but the Halsey Hall Chapter of SABR had Paul Castner as a guest panelist at one of their semi-annual meetings, sometime in the mid-1980s probably since he died in 1986. I think he was the guy who answered, when asked for his memories of Ty Cobb, whom he probably faced (I see now as I check) one time in a game on October 2, 1923, "ohhhhhh, he was a miserable fellow". Which put him pretty much in the mainstream of contemporary thought in those days. / Why stuff like this is still etched in my memory, but I can't come home from the store with the things my wife asked for, I don't know.

He hasn't been behind the plate in a game since 2012. If he did that in 2018, his quads or hammies would likely become the emergency.

He won't. Sano and Buxton are under team control through 2021, Kepler and Berrios through 2022. By the time any of these are pulling down $20M a year or greater, Mauer and ESan contracts will be distant memories. Also I don't know of an "etc" who will be needing contracts of the magnitude to worry about in 2022; you named all the high-end young guys, with Rosario and Polanco likely a tier down in salary. Moreover, the Twin Cities are capable of supporting a $150M payroll if the team is winning; and if the players we're thinking about are able to demand the salaries you're worrying about, the team will indeed win. Dozier's probably the only outlier in this. If extending his contract requires $20M a year in 2022 and beyond, I favor trading him, or else giving him a qualifying offer and letting him walk, in favor of our young infielders. Sure, management has to worry about the negative "what-ifs", but they also need to plan for success. If the success doesn't materialize, then the plan at 2022 will be to pivot to some other strategy. That's why FalVine get the big bucks. With years of team control for the key players, and the few current high-ticket contracts coming off the books, it can't be possible for a 5-year Darvish contract now to be an insurmountable obstacle to anything.

Paging Dr Glunn, Paging Dr Glunn, another 1K drop, the cat is lying motionless again, defibrillator paddles STAT!

Fangraphs... Glossary... that was too tough a Google search for me to come up with today. Thanks for humoring me.