ashbury

I think I wrote unclearly. Very few if any FA would fit both. All transactions (not just FA) this off-season should be viewed in terms of the criteria, each individually satisfying one or the other, and not making one or the other uncorrectably worse. A few, such as a trade for Holland, have a potential to help both. Transactions will complement each other, more so than usual. No, I don't view a target date like 2015 as like turning on some light switch. If kids are ready to give it a try in the big show in 2014, they should be brought up, which hopefully makes them even more ready for 2015. If they are not ready, they should not be force-fed, as it just burns a year of arbitration eligibility. As in any other season, you make a plan for a few years down the road, and when the inevitable bumps in the road show up (TJ surgery, prospect plateauing at single-A) you adjust. I'm saying that 2015 for the Twins looks like when a real turning point could start in terms of competitiveness, and you should load up for then and beyond, while making short-term moves to get you through the coming two years without it being a revenue-killing drought and without mortgaging that more-promising future. I think it can be done, piece by piece.

They should not accept a 110-loss team for 2013-14. All transactions must be viewed in both of two positive lights: a) it helps a contending team in 2015, it helps bridge to 2015 by having a decent team in 2013-14. A 3-year contract to Dempster satisfies but violates a) assuming he is bad by then. A trade for Holland probably satisfies both. The trade of Span for a stud SP prospect satisfies a) and frees some salary for . Taking on salary for 2013-14 in a way that brings prospects, such as a large trade involving Alfonso Soriano, could accomplish both. Et cetera, et cetera.

Minnesota = State Twin Cities = Town, more or less I actually do remember the difference from when I lived there.

Slama's 28 years old, right? Not wasting a year on the 40-man thus prevents his prematurely reaching the free-agent market when he's, what, 32, 33, 34? I'm never sure.

As with election years ("all politics is local"), each team-attendance situation is likely keyed to on-field performance for some given years, and each market will react differently to the perceived success of the team. I'd be afraid to use too much statistical inference in the case of so relatively few datapoints, and be more inclined to eyeball it. If a team in a new park keeps its winning percentage up, it seems as if the honeymoon can go on and on, i.e. higher attendance levels than in previous periods of team success in the old park. The Giants have been in their new park since 2000 and the honeymoon is still going strong; attendance dipped modestly during a period of poor on-field results but never to a level of the old park, and has since bounced back. By contrast, if the team on the field stinks, the honeymoon can be short. The White Sox lost their attendance mojo very quickly after the winning stopped, and attendance was back down to something like where it was in the old park after just 4 years. The decline in the Twins attendance in 2012 looks like on a similar trajectory to the Sox. Another losing season in '13 may have per-game numbers under 30K like before the move. It could be something to do with what a market is receptive to; I have the sense that going to a Giants game (ditto Fenway, Wrigley) is more like an "event" while in a lot of other cases a team has to market competitiveness on the field, which in a zero-sum game has to run out of luck for some teams each year. But Minnesota is kind of a front-runner's town and there's probably not much the front office can do to market it differently.

Originally posted in reply to thread These Call-Ups Are a Downer The Twins' 40-man roster is apparently at 39 right now, and the desire for waiver-wire flexibility is a reason given not to bring up one or two other players for September, such as Anthony Slama. How can a last-place team have any issues at all managing their 40-man roster? Just sooooo many talented players, the other teams will scoop an All-Star-in-the-making right up, if the Twins aren't careful? Indecisiveness, maybe that's the reason. Morneau, will he or won't he return to previous levels? Span, can we squeeze just a bit more out of a trade? Middle infielders, so many flashy-glove no-stick players to choose from, better hang onto a bunch and see if one steps forward. Meanwhile, at least, the scouts and front-office can make up their minds about Slama not being able to translate AAA success to the majors. So I guess indecision can't be the culprit after all. Without going through the 40-man, spot by spot, doesn't it break down roughly like this? your 25 best guys for the major league roster 5 AAAA guys to cover the inevitable injuries 5 young guys who are too old to be left off but on whom the jury is still out (a little indecisiveness is necessary and good) 5 contingency spots because what I just laid out here is too simple What additional needs and purposes are clogging up the Twins' 40-man roster? With 21 pitchers and 18 position players currently listed, I guess the area of concern is clear. I'm not in the mood to discuss spots #39, #38, ... . A forty-man roster is intended to be a bit of a headache for the "have" teams. Not the have-nots.

Originally posted in reply to thread These Call-Ups Are a Downer The Twins' 40-man roster is apparently at 39 right now, and the desire for waiver-wire flexibility is a reason given not to bring up one or two other players for September, such as Anthony Slama. How can a last-place team have any issues at all managing their 40-man roster? Just sooooo many talented players, the other teams will scoop an All-Star-in-the-making right up, if the Twins aren't careful? Indecisiveness, maybe that's the reason. Morneau, will he or won't he return to previous levels? Span, can we squeeze just a bit more out of a trade? Middle infielders, so many flashy-glove no-stick players to choose from, better hang onto a bunch and see if one steps forward. Meanwhile, at least, the scouts and front-office can make up their minds about Slama not being able to translate AAA success to the majors. So I guess indecision can't be the culprit after all. Without going through the 40-man, spot by spot, doesn't it break down roughly like this? your 25 best guys for the major league roster 5 AAAA guys to cover the inevitable injuries 5 young guys who are too old to be left off but on whom the jury is still out (a little indecisiveness is necessary and good) 5 contingency spots because what I just laid out here is too simple What additional needs and purposes are clogging up the Twins' 40-man roster? With 21 pitchers and 18 position players currently listed, I guess the area of concern is clear. I'm not in the mood to discuss spots #39, #38, ... . A forty-man roster is intended to be a bit of a headache for the "have" teams. Not the have-nots.

tl;dnr

Reading your post, I caught a whiff of stale tutti-frutti gum. I know gum doesn't come with card packs anymore. Just strange how the memory works.

Sign me up for Deal #1 too. Second choice is to keep Frankie.

The transactions of the last few days boil down to Blackburn being replaced by Deduno, and Parmelee being replaced by... Fien? So, we're back to a roster of 13 pitchers and 3 catchers. Very little scope for pinch-hitting and pinch-running. I guess this has been hashed to death, but it still seems weird to me. Wasn't so long ago that 11 pitchers were enough for a staff. And I think it detracts from the enjoyment of the tactical game - instead of managers having to anticipate opposing moves and countering them, it's just a matter of running wave after wave of fresh arms out there to throw heat for an inning.

The transactions of the last few days boil down to Blackburn being replaced by Deduno, and Parmelee being replaced by... Fien? So, we're back to a roster of 13 pitchers and 3 catchers. Very little scope for pinch-hitting and pinch-running. I guess this has been hashed to death, but it still seems weird to me. Wasn't so long ago that 11 pitchers were enough for a staff. And I think it detracts from the enjoyment of the tactical game - instead of managers having to anticipate opposing moves and countering them, it's just a matter of running wave after wave of fresh arms out there to throw heat for an inning.

Isn't compensation now granted only when the qualifying offer is quite high, an average of top players or something, in the range of $11M per year?

Your analysis looks sound, and happens to coincide with my snap judgement which is, "no effin' way with this guy."

At this point I think I keep Span. I'd really like to know the ages of all these players, as a 25 year old SP in AA doesn't interest me but a 22 year old might. Given the framework explained for option 3, if the addition of Doumit pries loose the third prospect, then I would like to explore keeping Span and just making it Doumit for that one pitcher (if he's not 25!!!), throwing in a spare-part single-A prospect if necessary to MAKE THIS DEAL! I know this goes against the rules of the game you've set up, but I'm guilty of getting back to reality, I'm afraid, and sometimes trades arise out of a completely different discussion. By the way, good job on making these trade packages realistic - apparently you matched the past trades very well to what Span brings to the table. Most of these trades sound like pieces that don't fit in very well with their current team - which is kind of how Delmon Young found his way onto the Twins. As the old saying goes, the best trades are the ones you don't make - almost always the other GM knows what he's got and is trading it away for a reason.

For contrast, you could rate Darin Mastroianni's beard: http://media.scout.com/Media/Image/43/437017m.jpg

It's only a start to what would be a more solid analysis (say, looking a little harder for trades of lesser magnitude that still brought 2 or more legitimate prospects), but points in the direction that I think is a true conclusion, namely that we're looking at a summer of one-for-one trades of any significant talent that may have various spare parts included for any of a number of reasons. Shoot! I forgot a trade candidate, even though he stares me right in the face in the first list of trades: Matt Capps Age: 28 Jun 12 WAR: 0.6 Prev WAR: 0.8 Career WAR: 6.2 These numbers don't stack up any better to the list of big-time trading chips than the rest of the Twins' candidates (and it's not as if WAR is systematically prejudiced against closers, since Nathan regularly had seasonal WAR in the 2-3 range and Rivera goes even higher). What we need is a trading partner who'll do a swap similar to the Ramos deal; can we get Bill Smith planted as a mole in some team's organization?

> Is the WAR of the player, or the players returned? Of the veteran player only. Unless I made typos. > Because isn't that part of the question, how much WAR did you give up to get what WAR in return? It's part of "a" question, I guess. But my purpose here was more modest: to try and line up current Twins assets to assets that have been used in big trades from the past. In the case of several of these trades, it's too soon to know the WAR gotten in return anyway (or also how much WAR was ultimately traded away in future years' production). Again, I wasn't trying to assess the success of the trades; it's certainly an interesting question to wonder how much is received in return for a player with a certain profile of WAR numbers past and present, but when trading for prospects you don't know for sure what you'll get anyway, and looking after-the-fact at WAR is almost exactly the opposite of what I wanted to do, which is to look at the trades from the perspective of the moment they were transacted. You need something other than WAR (of the later years) to measure what a prospect's value was thought *at the time* to be. Not every player in a 5-player package is a blue-chipper, but in the trades listed, the packages weren't typically just one stud with 4 fillers. So, it seemed enough to just group these trades generally, looking for a pattern of what was being traded away. And the pattern I think I see is that the Twins have absolutely no one on the roster who is likely to pull more than a single can't-miss prospect, paired maybe with a second good but unproven player. And IMO trading at that rate of speed means treading water, with a sub-.500 club, indefinitely. That doesn't mean no trades are possible, or in the Twins' interest. But I'm convinced more than before that trading alone isn't going to restock the system in one stroke. Maybe I'm setting up a straw man argument here that no one was actually arguing to be the case. > Also, if your team as currently constructed utterly stinks, but you think you have 2-4 starters in the minors ready in, say, 2015, wouldn't you want to trade your current players and get 1-4 more guys that will be ready in 2015? It can be done, but it's hard to do well. It's true, a strategy of trading veterans for prospects is quite a lot more complicated than just backing up the truck and loading the merchandise. My aim here was much humbler, to assess how big of a truck might be needed. Looks like a U-Haul trailer is enough.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1217[/ATTACH] There has been much banter about whom the Twins might trade, and what they might get in return, if and when they decide to give up on the season and become "sellers" at the trade deadline in July. Folks seem to expect that several prospects can be obtained for the most prized of the Twins' trading chips, thus restocking the minors and/or bringing major-league ready talent to the parent club, particularly on the pitching side. So I got curious what kind of return teams actually get, historically, when they trade someone valuable. The other day, I put out a posting with the question of what good trades came to mind - ones at the high end like Teixeira that brought a good nucleus. (Thanx and a tip o' the baseball cap to daan4786, boom boom, cdog, coach j, gunnarthor, and jtrinaldi for their nominations.) I wound up with 17 trades to look at. A few opening comments. I am not trying to judge who "won" these trades; each one was viewed at the time as a gamble on young talent in exchange for a known quantity (to whatever extent value can be known in baseball). I decided to use Wins Above Replacement (WAR), as found on the baseball-reference.com site - I need a metric that attempts to place a value on batters and pitchers alike, combining offensive and defensive contributions, and it's not my purpose here to defend WAR itself - if you don't like WAR, feel free to construct your own study. Finally, this is not a comprehensive study of "trades in general" - I was purposely looking for trades that brought a lot in return, again because of the presumption in some places that the Twins can restock with a few astute trades, so I colored the discussion from the outset by holding up the Teixeira trade as a benchmark. For each veteran listed, I present the return that was obtained (either a number of prospects, or a specific name when it was one-for one), the age of the most recent season (or mid-season) of stats when the trade took place, the date of the trade (to distinguish between off-season trades and deadline trades when the in-season WAR reflects only a partial season), and then three WAR values: of the current or most recent season, of the previous season (in a few cases marked by asterisks I give some benefit of the doubt by reverting to two seasons previous, when the previous season was marred by injury or otherwise didn't seem representative of what a GM would be looking at), and finally a career total WAR up to the time the trade occurred to give a sense of the total body of work by the given age. Again, my purpose is not to bother looking after the trade is completed; the clock stops when the trade is made. Here they are, sorted in order of the age of the veteran player: Mat Latos for 4 prospects Age: 23 Dec 17 WAR: 1.5 Prev WAR: 3.0 Career WAR: 4.4 Gio Gonzalez for 4 prospects Age: 25 Dec 23 WAR: 3.9 Prev WAR: 3.6 Career WAR: 5.8 A.J. Pierzynski for 3 pitchers Age: 26 Nov 14 WAR: 4.2 Prev WAR: 2.1 Career WAR: 8.6 Matt Capps for Wilson Ramos Age: 26 Jul 29 WAR: 0.3 Prev WAR: -1.2 Career WAR: 3.9 Zack Greinke for 4 prospects Age: 26 Dec 19 WAR: 3.2 Prev WAR: 10.1 Career WAR: 24.8 Mark Teixeira for 5 prospects Age: 27 Jul 31 WAR: 2.5 Prev WAR: 4.2 Career WAR: 22.3 CC Sabathia for 4 prospects Age: 27 Jul 7 WAR: 1.7 Prev WAR: 6.0 Career WAR: 25.7 Chuck Knoblauch for 4 prospects Age: 28 Feb 6 WAR: 6.5 Prev WAR: 8.4 Career WAR: 36.3 Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir Age: 28 Jul 30 WAR: 1.7 Prev WAR: 2.4 Career WAR: 4.4 Shaun Marcum for Brett Lawrie Age: 28 Dec 6 WAR: 3.8 Prev WAR: 2.7* Career WAR: 9.1 Hunter Pence for 4 prospects Age: 28 Jul 29 WAR: 3.2 Prev WAR: 2.8 Career WAR: 17.3 Matt Holliday for 2 prospects and 1 established reliever Age: 28 Nov 10 WAR: 5.6 Prev WAR: 5.8 Career WAR: 17.5 Michael Bourn for 4 prospects Age: 28 Jul 31 WAR: 2.1 Prev WAR: 5.3 Career WAR: 13.0 Frank Viola for 5 prospects Age: 29 Jul 31 WAR: 3.1 Prev WAR: 7.4 Career WAR: 25.0 Casey Blake for Carlos Santana Age: 34 Jul 26 WAR: 1.6 Prev WAR: 2.4 Career WAR: 14.8 Carlos Beltran for Wheeler Age: 34 Jul 28 WAR: 3.5 Prev WAR: 3.5* Career WAR: 58.7 Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz Age: 36 Aug 12 WAR: 2.0 Prev WAR: 1.7 Career WAR: 24.8 Capps and Zambrano and Marcum jump out as having the thinnest "resume" at their respective ages; a single (but very good) prospect was fetched in return for them; their all being pitchers suggests what GMs are thinking when they trade away prospects. Latos and Gonzalez were very very young, so their Career WAR can be excused as their recent two years' WAR were very attractive ("only" WAR of 1.5 from a 23 year old? sign me up!). Michael Bourn is a bit shaky in this grouping, with his main attraction apparently being his previous stellar year. The older guys, Blake and Beltran and Alexander, each snagged a single (but again very good) prospect. OK, so now what? Well, I picked ten current Twins player that seem to be the subject of trade discussion in the TwinsDaily forums. Again, I sort them in order of age: Danny Valencia Age: 27 Jun 12 WAR:-1.1 Prev WAR: 1.9* Career WAR: 0.2 Alexi Casilla Age: 27 Jun 12 WAR: 0.5 Prev WAR: 1.3 Career WAR: 1.2 Francisco Liriano Age: 28 Jun 12 WAR:-0.9 Prev WAR: 4.0* Career WAR: 8.0 Denard Span Age: 28 Jun 12 WAR: 1.7 Prev WAR: 2.3 Career WAR: 13.4 Joe Mauer Age: 29 Jun 12 WAR: 1.0 Prev WAR: 5.5* Career WAR: 33.9 Nick Blackburn Age: 30 Jun 12 WAR:-1.0 Prev WAR: 0.5 Career WAR: 3.6 Justin Morneau Age: 31 Jun 12 WAR: 0.2 Prev WAR: 4.6* Career WAR: 18.5 Ryan Doumit Age: 31 Jun 12 WAR:-0.1 Prev WAR: 1.0 Career WAR: 7.1 Josh Willingham Age: 33 Jun 12 WAR: 2.0 Prev WAR: 2.1 Career WAR: 14.8 Carl Pavano Age: 36 Jun 12 WAR:-0.8 Prev WAR: 1.8 Career WAR: 14.9 And now, I look for matches between the Twins list versus the historical list, guided to great extent by age. Valencia, Casilla, Blackburn, Doumit: None of these guys remotely resemble any of these historical trades, not even for a single good prospect. They just don't have the track record. It's possible that a trade for a prospect could occur, but it won't be a Smoltz or a Kazmir. Liriano, Pavano: Nobody in the list of trades had a bad current WAR, where the trade was made based on hopes of a rebound to past performance. It's hard to forecast getting a genuine prospect in return for either pitcher, sorry to say. Willingham: Kind of matches up with Casey Blake, who netted one good position player, moreso than Beltran who brought a pitcher. We love JWillie, but his offense so far is a little out of line with his track record while his defense is a known minus, and I don't see GMs valuing him as highly as Beltran for a pennant push. Morneau: I was surprised that his current WAR remains so low, due to the below-par batting average. Again, we love him, but I suspect the WAR reflects a little more faithfully how other GMs will factor in the potential for a full rebound to his MVP season versus the risk of injury. If his current WAR were higher he might be a good match for a Hunter Pence or Michael Bourn kind of trade, and I don't see his salary being an obstacle. But as it is, I just don't know. Mauer: Again the current WAR does not reflect what he could contribute if he bounces back a bit more. Maybe WAR isn't so good a proxy for what another GM might think of Mauer in a trade; but then WAR doesn't reflect the high-end salary Mauer commands, either. Tough to find a match in the first list - Knoblauch had established a really stellar resume by about that age, but his two most current seasons far eclipse what Mauer has (though I give Joe the benefit of the doubt with that asterisk). Again, I don't see a haul like in the first list, if Mauer was traded. Span: Finally, the trading chip most talked about here. Where's the match? Unfortunately, Zambrano looks like the closest one to me (Zambrano came up late, accounting for a relatively low career WAR), even though he's a pitcher, suggesting that only one stud prospect could be obtained for him. Span is valuable, indeed, but relative to other center fielders he's just about average, and the list of trades doesn't suggest how you would do more than close one hole (say in the starting rotation) while opening the hole in CF (which you might hope to cover with Revere). To get more, Span would need to be perceived as much better than average among center fielders. Well, I came out of this small study with basically the same view as I came in with, that even "backing up the truck" to dispose of current players would not re-stock the system like one would hope. The design of the study was shaped by my expectation, no doubt, so maybe I've overlooked some area of hope. But right now, I don't see how Terry Ryan will be able to do better than tit-for-tat trades, that bring individual young talent at the expense of current abilities; there just is nobody on the roster like Teixeira and Knoblauch and Viola in their primes. Pavano was supposed to be our Doyle Alexander to use to snare a young talent, but it doesn't look like it's going to work out. [ATTACH=CONFIG]1218[/ATTACH]

I just set up the joke. Feel free to provide your own punchline.

While looking for something else, I ran across on Yahoo's team roster page that Drew Butera is listed among the pitchers. So that I won't think I was just imagining things after they correct it, here is a compressed screen shot: [ATTACH=CONFIG]1134[/ATTACH]

Humber doesn't seem to have found the first inning a particularly difficult one tonight.