ashbury

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that one of those needs will be "pitching". And if we're not in contention that year, someone else will have such a need.

Come to a chapter meeting sometime, if you're in the vicinity. Cigars are banned from the venue, though you could probably smuggle whiskey if that's really your thing on a Saturday morning, but you'll likely hear more stories and laughter than you seem to be expecting. And obviously the chapter's name is meant with reverence.

Depends on what you believe SABR thinking to be.

Remember, folks, you heard it here first!

I forgot about the idea (perhaps necessity) of a buyout, and frankly it reduces my interest in going for that. It amounts to guaranteeing him $14M, in the hope of a $20M kind of 2019 season from him and another in 2020 at the incremental cost of the option, and that's just enough more risk to tip me away. The actual deal suits me better in that case. Though, now, I'm wavering just before I click Post...

That sounds low for an option year. Maybe the shine is off of Pineda after several mediocre years leading up to his surgery, but he used to be viewed as a front-of-the-rotation starter. So the deal as it is currently constructed amounts to $10M guaranteed money to the pitcher, in hopes of a $20M kind of season from him in 2019. That is not a long term contribution to our window of contention, but is better than a "stop-gap" and amounts to a Jack Morris kind of deal (different circumstances of course), where the long range plan is to have someone at that same caliber to step in, in 2020 and beyond. But I agree, this deal shoulders most of the risk on the player's behalf, and I would have liked a team option for 2020 at, say $14M or so. If he pans out, the team wins, and even from his perspective he still collects $24M, with the ability to go for another big payday after that. If he doesn't pan out, the parties part company on good terms. Oh well. As stated above, the player wasn't open to that.

Quad Cities, near the end of that video clip? I love that ballpark!

Bumping this one just to offer kudos for the foresight - are you our mole in the Front Office? Actual discussion of Pineda now belongs in the Article about his signing: http://twinsdaily.com/topic/28173-article-twins-sign-rhp-michael-pineda

Mod note: TD has an article on the subject of Michael Pineda now - please continue the discussion of that player there. http://twinsdaily.com/topic/28173-article-twins-sign-rhp-michael-pineda/

Mod note: TD has an article on the subject of Michael Pineda now - please continue the discussion of that player there. http://twinsdaily.com/topic/28173-article-twins-sign-rhp-michael-pineda/

Comparing a contract for a player who has bargaining power versus that of a player still under team control is not very relevant to anything. Bryan Shaw would be the fourth shortest pitcher on the roster, were we to have signed him. That's about equally relevant.

One of the intangibles that scouts supposedly used to look for, in addition to all the tools and so forth, is the "good face". Ben Rortvedt IMO (not that I have the faintest clue what they actually look for) has the good face - he looks mature above his age. Personally I think it's likely a worthless observation, but I still like this photo (borrowed from his Adopt-A-Prospect page) which was a pretty typical look you'd find from him.

April 23 - onto the 10-day DL May 9 - reinstated May 30 - onto the 10-day DL June 27 - to GCL for rehab July 1 - to FSL for rehab July 26 - returned to Boston After he returned to Pawtucket, he performed as in the past. Who knows what the evaluators were seeing, during that last month of supposed rehab that dragged on and on. So, ten games of low leverage innings, ending in failure like this due to physical issues combined with some unspoken dissatisfaction, makes sense if you're keeping a 22-year old like DIaz, who's understood to be not ready. I don't see the same excuse when it's a 25-year old starter whose limited upside is pretty well demonstrated already. And I still have seen no answer to what the Twins gained from all the monkeying around during the draft, to end up with this outcome, instead of just drafting Haley in the first place. What a waste of a 40-man spot. We might have used it to keep Stuart Turner, for instance - which arguably would have been better for his development, playing at AA or AAA, instead of rotting on Cincy's bench for a year. Or we should have just traded Turner (or similar) to Boston for Haley, and at least been able to option him. $50K isn't much, but the Haleys of the world don't cost much in trade either, and the inability to option someone is a large hidden cost.

I do not make that proposed trade for Cole instantly. I ask them for a medium-grade SS prospect in addition, and then failing that I ask for some International Free Agent cap money. I don't want them thinking I'm some barracuda by accepting their offer too fast - they might wake up and back out of it, saying "hey, waitaminnit."

I'm not real fond of W-L, but Slegers did have himself a nice AAA. season. For a little closer look at the game-by-game results, Baseball-reference.com provides a version of Bill James's "Game Score" in their game log, where a score of 50 and above represents something fairly close to a quality start, and Aaron had 15 of those in his 24 starts at Rochester, 4 so-so games with scores 40-49, and 5 stinkers below 40. Perhaps more importantly, he got 4 of those 5 stinkers out of his system by early June, and compiled a nice streak of 11 games of 40+ scores, most of those being 50+. That's the kind of consistency I imagined the front office was looking for before they would call him up, and they did indeed add him to the 40-man for a spot start in August, and then invited him for September as well. Come to think of it, 15 good starts and 5 stinkers comes pretty close to that 15-4 W-L, with the fluctuations happening to basically cancel out, but I still trust game scores a little better. I don't hype him as a future ace, obviously, but I see his upside as rotation workhorse more than just fifth starter.

You have to have 11, before you can have 12. That's just math.

That's the puzzling part. The rest just highlights that whatever it was, didn't work. And as already stated, the 25-man roster spot was the more valuable resource, than just the 18 innings. They saved some face with a stint on the DL, presumably stalling to let him gain some more benefit from coaching, and threw in the towel when out of choices. Take Haley first, I'm cool with that, because I'll trust that the FO felt he was the best pick to click. Monkey around during the draft like they did, and my tolerance for the misfire during the season is just that much less. Unless someone clarifies to me that it wasn't monkeying around at all. Even if it didn't work out like they hoped (because, say, some other team drafted in the interim in some unplanned way).

Assuming the demand doesn't still exceed the supply, in which case even the scraps cost more than they might have a few days/weeks earlier. It's a game of musical chairs, one chair and one contestant removed at each step - except that some years there are more chairs than contestants, and other years there are more contestants than chairs. Which contestant, or which chair, will end up left out at the end?

In advance of the Rule-5 draft, we have 14 position players on the 40-man roster. Fourteen! A team can't realistically go into a season with that number, can they? Something has got to be in the works to add to that quantity. Even with the number of pitchers exposed to possible drafting, we have 22 hurlers on the 40-man. That becomes a seemingly unsustainable 23 if a pitcher is added via free-agency. For comparison, a team like the Astros currently are at 18/20. Dodgers, 18/22. A ratio like 20/20 or 19/21 seems like the norm when the dust settles and the season starts. 14/22?!? I have to believe big changes are coming to pull these numbers for the Twins closer in balance, in a way not currently being discussed whatsoever.

I have clicked refresh approximately 100 times since reading this post, and still no Darvish. Come on!

It seems intuitive, since 25-man rosters are the limiting factor. You can't get to 100 wins with (say) 60 1-WAR players. If you sign two 2-WAR players, that ties up two roster spots, whereas signing one 4-WAR player doesn't limit you to a 0-WAR player for the other roster spot. Teams with championship aspirations would bid that 4-WAR guy right up. But the above-mentioned Matt Swartz wrote an article demonstrating that linearity is not a bad assumption, after all. I think the solution to the seeming paradox is to remember (again) that we are talking about the cost of signing players who have bargaining power, only. And we are discussing actual WAR delivered (in hindsight), not the (unknowable) forecasts that the contract offers are based on. Since any team with championship aspirations has a pipeline of cheap talent coming up too, with a precious few of those prospects forecasted to be above 3 or 4 WAR themselves, augmenting the roster with a 2-WAR player might be more valuable than it looks. Also, it's really important to avoid a 0- (or negative-) WAR player, and a couple of proven veterans at the 2-WAR level might be more appealing than taking a chance on a rookie. As Swartz (inelegantly ) summarized, "there are, in practice, many different options a teams has". Linearity aside, the table Swartz offers also show a trend over time toward teams paying more and more, for less and less return.

If someone can explain the masterstroke in last winter's Rule-5 draft, where we chose Miguel Diaz and then hilarity ensued all the way through July 24, I will be more inclined to decide on crushing versus non-crushing. What did we net, in exchange for the investment of a 25-man roster spot for more than half a season during which we wound up in post-season contention?

Yeah, I was about to recommend his series of articles. They are at: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/author/matts/ Probably should scroll down to the first of his July 2017 articles and work your way back up chronologically. Anyone with serious concerns about trying to understand the cost of acquiring MLB-ready talent on the open market should read these critically, along with the comments that have been posted there by readers. He says on his LinkedIn page he consults to a MLB team (the Nationals), as well as doing risk management for an insurance company (Cigna), so his POV should not be dismissed out of hand.

That's undisputed. I don't know why you keep coming back to this point. Even the largest market teams do not pay market prices for their entire 25-man rosters. Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Aaron Hicks, Luis Severino, along with the various low-salary role-players, all make the Yankees' front office jobs much easier. Teams don't pay $8M (or whatever) per WAR. Full stop. They pay $8M (or whatever) per WAR to players who, by virtue of 6+ years of service, can more nearly control their own destiny. This includes free agency, but also players who agree to deals with their teams so as to buy out their free agency. Smaller market teams pay this same price, otherwise they get outbid for an individual player. They simply do it a lot less frequently, perforce, than the big boys.