ashbury

The breaking pitches to Buxton that I remember, I want to be laid off, not swung at.

I suspect you're going to be equally wowed by every contract extension of a not-yet-FA-eligible young player you read about, by any team, then. The reason $7M for a good season will be a great deal is that the contract blends also all the risk of not-great outcomes into the price. You're looking at the upside but not the downside. Which... is fine for our team to do. They, being the ones who sign a few dozen player contracts every year, are better placed to absorb the risk, than the player who has only one life to live and values the certainty. Kepler's now set for life - the tradeoff being that he could have bet on himself and possibly gotten more, but just as possibly ended up with almost nothing if the worst were to happen. So, good deal for both sides - just like life insurance is a good deal for those at certain times in their lives - the individual has the risk smoothed out, the big company comes out ahead on average. But way short of "incredible," the term you chose, for the team.

You've aged a lot in recent weeks.

I'm not sure if the story was actually buried. I believe that Kodiak brown bear received some MVP votes the following November in recognition of his contribution to the team. We've collectively just pushed Clete out of our memory.

Desired are the guys about whom opponents say, "he can beat you even when he's not hitting." Nothing new under the sun, of course.

I don't know of anyone posting with "joy" about Robbie's deficiencies. But in an era of 13-man pitching staffs leaving only 3 bench spots in the AL game, you could probably say the same thing about any one-tool player - there will be times they suffer for not having a dedicated power bat on the bench, or not having a truly glove-only whiz on the bench, or not having a Herb Washington type of pinch runner on the bench (OK, teams figured that out long ago ). Grossman isn't a horrible player but he's a tweener who puts a lot of pressure on the roster when you have him.

It was of course Seth who brought up FG, in the first reply. While well-intentioned, and casts the new contract in a favorable light, I think it is a serious misuse of the notion of dollars-per-WAR. And not for the reasons already brought up. I wouldn't quibble about the exact value per win - you'll find differing values depending on which FG article you look at and which years were looked at, and whether the methodology was forward-looking or backward-looking, among other things. The bigger problem is that the number pertains to free agents. The Collective Bargaining Agreement is structured a certain way. As it has evolved, the premium paid to free agents amounts to the Stupidity Tax you pay for not having developed your own, young, cheap talent, for whatever spot on the roster you have decided is below par. Every team has to pay this Stupidity Tax now and then (so I use the word Stupidity as mildly humorous); on the other hand, no team is now willing to pay also the Luxury Tax that comes on top of paying the Stupidity Tax for every player on the roster. All teams are somewhere between the extremes. Max Kepler was not a free agent. Full stop. Using the free agent Stupidity Tax, as a benchmark, is what one boss of mine used to call "interesting, but not relevant." The CBA makes it so that good players are vastly underpaid their first several years, and maybe marginally underpaid for the next several as well. Your (John's) charts demonstrate this quite well. Any contract extension that is reached during these years of a player's career is going to be shaped partly by the years remaining under team control, partly by the years of free agency being bought out, and partly by the security it gives both player and team. EVERY such contract is going to look good, compared to paying the Stupidity Tax. That doesn't mean an individual contract is good, by itself. Free agency is the wrong benchmark to use. Max Kepler wasn't a free agent. (Yes, that bears repeating.) What difference does it make? None, really, to us fans. But if our front office is congratulating themselves to the degree that Seth suggested, saying that the contract is a steal? Then it's a problem. If I were in Dave St Peter's or Jim Pohlad's position, I'd be very concerned about their acumen and would walk into their champagne party to tell them so. Anyone could load up on players with contract extensions like this, and still not have a very good, or particularly cost-effective, team for competing to make the post-season. I'm sure FalVine are not actually breaking open a bottle of the bubbly this week. Max is entitled to - he's now set for life, as he deserves to be in this economy. Like any long-term contract, Kepler's has enough uncertainty that it could turn out to be a steal for the team, or could turn out to be a bust - either outcome won't in retrospect make this any other than what it seems to be, a contract that's about market-correct. If someone with a sharper business eye than mine, or has better forecasting tools, thinks it's team-friendly, it's got to be only by a smidgen. Sprinkle IMO everywhere in the above, to taste.

Great article, and in return I offer mere quibbles: - Max's baseball experience in Germany is often mischaracterized like that. There is a small but strong American influence there, and he played as a young child, and attended the best baseball academy in that country. Maybe the instruction wasn't quite as good as he'd have gotten at the best places here. But it's far from him having been discovered on a Pacific atoll throwing coconuts into the ocean to conk distant dolphins, and having a tourist show him a baseball and ask, "y'ever seen one a these?" - Age 27 is about when a player had better already have established what he's going to establish, and not hope for further upswing. That's about the point where further learning and experience starts to collide with Father Time eroding the physical gifts. - This off-season free agent market has been a wakeup call for players in their thirties, and additionally with the CBA coming up for renegotiation it's really unclear what the market for Max will be when the time comes. Yes, he'll find employment if he's still capable, but it may turn out in retrospect that players in his age cohort had better have made the vast majority of their lifetime earnings during the period this new contract covers. The times, they are a-changing.

If you believe in the categorization, "the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns," this news has moved Gibson from the first to the second group.

The Sophomore Jinx was a common trope when I was growing up, and back then we didn't know to look for signs like a high BABIP that might not be sustainable. Nowadays we spot these things in advance, and guys like Danny Santana don't catch us by surprise as often. This is what has people looking skeptically at Cave this year - though he might still defy this sign (his bat is better than Santana's). Think about how good rookie seasons occur. If a young guy does poorly in April, he may get sent down to AAA before his rookie status is expired, rather than let him see whether the breaks might even out for him over the course of the full season. They also don't suffer the nagging injuries that can torpedo a season. Only the guys doing well stay up long enough to qualify for Rookie of the Year discussion. So there's a bit of a statistical bias built in, where there's more to lose than to gain in the following season, if luck happens to even out in the other direction. Tampa's relatively unheralded Joey Wendle got RoY votes, and his BABIP was .353 - guess who I'd put money on suffering some kind of mild Sophomore Jinx? I don't have the database chops to do it, but I bet if you went back to the era before sabrmetrics took hold, you could take the guys with good rookie seasons and find a strong (negative) correlation between BABIP and how well they did the next season. The same study done on more modern players might not show as strong a correlation because front offices are paying attention to that, putting a different kind of bias into the data. Anyway. Jake Cave. Yeah.

Sorry to be dense, but I see "2017" and that year was good in AAA and got him a call-up. You do mean 2018 as the miserable year?

Nice tidbits - his close tie to Polanco was something I don't recall seeing. Also, did you know his parents dance ballet? (yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss)

I always think back to the scene in Bull Durham where they discuss what you say to the media, when I see a quote like this one. I'm glad he's aware enough to say it, but I don't attach any real meaning to it.

“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 Twin [sic]

Once you've made the hall of fame TWICE, each of your first two years, it's tough to remain focused for your age-23 season.

. This seems related to the same death-wish that causes white college moths to be irresistibly drawn to the forbidden flame of putting on blackface.

That's a whatever-is-the-opposite-of-scorching Tepid Take, man!

Luis Rivas is a shoo-in for the Age-21 and Age-22 Halls of Fame, and Clark likewise belongs in the A23HOF.

It *will* take more to sign Rosario, and always was going to, regardless of the order they sign. He has more service time, by about a year versus Kepler I think, and even more compared to Polanco. That's a lot of additional negotiating power. If they sign Eddie for an equivalent length extension, arbitration rules start him from a higher negotiating point (versus just going year to year and then taking free agency). If they sign him for a year fewer than Kepler, then it will still be more on an annual basis because we've already gotten all the cheap young years out of Rosario that exist. I think you're worrying about something that can't be helped, based on the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Unless you are hoping that one of the players has a rube for an agent and we can take advantage of him - IMO that would be a bad thing to hope for anyway.

An above-market signing might have negative repercussions on the next round of player negotiations. I don't think anyone is saying that about the Polanco and Kepler deals. Thus, the order isn't relevant.

I too am hoping for an under-the-radar pick at #1. I mean, how strong a minor league system would you have, if Royce Lewis is ranked #21 or lower?

But it's a DRY steamy heat.

I've been known to recycle Hallmark cards, but recycling posts is ridiculous. Speaking of cards, this was at the store when I went birthday shopping for him: Chief spotted a rattlesnake on the way to work this morning. I mean, he must have been. Rattlesnakes don't get days off, do they? Happy thirtieth or fortieth or whatever, Chief! I even filled in his name, to personalize it. Still left it at the store, after doing so, but it's the thought that counts, right? Saved us both money: me for the cost of the card, Chief for the postage-due.

There's an Article up on the subject now, so I ask that further comment be directed to it. http://twinsdaily.com/topic/32262-article-twins-jorge-polanco-finalizing-contract-extension/