ashbury

Very thought provoking article, and if (as one of the early responders stated) it leaves the reader more confused than before, perhaps that is progress! We don't know exactly what ownership judges the FO on. If we try to infer, though, it's got to be at least in part the year-end expenditure of payroll, isn't it? If so, then all the things we are discussing, such as Opening Day payroll, are just benchmarks along the way, that Falvey and his gang use to guide themselves. After opening day, they will make all kinds of roster moves that cost money; making a waiver claim puts the team on the hook for the remainder of that player's salary, promoting a prospect to the big club which puts him on the 40-man with the attendant financial obligations, and so forth. Not to mention, the ability to swing a trade at the deadline that adds a million or two in salary. These are smaller figures than signing a Buxton or Correa, but if (say) you have a hard limit of $140M at the end of the season, and you have brushed up against $139M already, then it limits your ability to bring up rookies and snap up those waiver-wire gems that we love so much. But is that year-end payroll number even set in stone? If Twins attendance picks up, mightn't ownership allot a little more leeway in June or July, affording a chance to swing a trade, etc? Attendance has been mentioned (maybe unwisely) by Dave St Peter as a gating issue. Cash flow perhaps is being given less attention by fans than it should. We have heard over the years that ownership does not "carry over" financial results from one year to another. It was said in the Terry Ryan era that the FO can't apply the banked savings from the rebuilding years toward a splurge during the contention window. But even if this is true, the devil is in the details: Accountants! GAAP! Accruals! Cash Flow! Depreciation! Revenue Recognition! In the article, it was mentioned that signing bonuses and option buy-outs are nettlesome issues. If they are computed one way for baseball's competitive purposes, they probably are dealt with differently by the bean-counters who, at the end of the day, have to make sure the salary checks clear when the players deposit them. The team has no particular incentive to reveal these internal numbers. We're confused, after reading this fine article, not because some of the information is unknown by us, but because it's unknowable by us, at least to the degree of accuracy we want. "The Twins don’t have much room to work with" probably is the best we can do.

The headline asked that question. The article itself examined both sides of the question, and came down with a conclusion that was a measured "yes". The comments have been thoughtful. Did you read more than the headline? What's your position on the topic? Could you answer it? Should you? 😀

That was more work than I wanted to undertake, so thanks for doing it. Keep in mind, though, that my posts have been in reference to an article with a title suggesting the Twins' bullpen could be THE best. Regardless of where the inherited runners came from, they scored, and the IS% (bad either with or without your analysis) can not be consistent with a shutdown bullpen. "Best bullpen" simply didn't pass the eye-test for me when I watched Twins games last season, either. They have a few good relievers. The best bullpens are deep. Many of the inherited runners scored against pitchers who won't be with the team in 2025; big deal, if those arms get replaced in the usual way, which at the moment it looks like.

The only way to spread the innings among 7 available arms is for someone to do as you say, every now and then. Rocco tries it now and then, Alcala for a couple innings as an example.

Team photo resembles the varsity squad at our local middle school. 😀

Not really a road trip but I've got fuzzy plans to get down the hill to Sacramento. Don't know how the limited seating space will affect my idea to just go down when I feel like it and buy tickets behind home plate for a couple of games like I used to do in Oakland. 😀

Well said, and my little bit of arithmetic only scratches the surface of the work needed. Still if you could obtain an ERA of 2.90, instead of the 4.63 that Pablo had in his other games, you'd move mountains to get that if it was sustainable, and the other pitchers would just have to cope. A modified rule could be "Pablo pitches 5 days from today, unless today's start was a stinker and we'll give him an extra day." But it's not as simple as the "if" I just stated. And yes, the other pitchers would complain about not being given a fair shake, if their numbers didn't pan out and they wanted to blame the irregularity between starts. Maximizing Pablo's performance might not quite match maximizing the entire staff's.

Yeah, no kidding, Sherlock. 😀

Following up, because I had an idea after posting.... Lopez is someone to look at, empirically, and b-r.com has the pieces thanks to its game log. In 2024 he had 10 starts on 4 days of rest (i.e. the every-five-day pattern being suggested), out of his 32 starts. If I added correctly, he pitched 61.0 innings in those games, and gave up 20 earned runs. That's an ERA, on "short rest" by today's standards, of 2.90 if I haven't goofed up the math. Compared to his season ERA of 4.08, that's a pretty strong difference. He had several stinkers among his starts, and only one of those was on 4 days' rest. There's a heavy chicken-and-egg factor here, or call it a hidden statistical bias, since the manager and pitching coach get to choose each game's starter, and perhaps they put Pablo in the game on 4 days' rest only when they felt that he was going well. It's not the random process that good statistical analysis relies on, at all. I'd also want to assort his starts by "how did he do in the start following the game he pitched on short rest," in case there might be a pattern there. Need to look at Pablo's 2023, etc. Life is short, or at least my attention span is. Still, it's a pretty intriguing argument in favor of the 5-day plan for your best pitcher if his first name is Pablo. I'd want to look at similar analysis for Ober and Ryan, but unless they have a similar pattern, I'd advocate for "let Pablo be Pablo, and the others can go pound sand until they show they deserve the preferential treatment." 😀

A good question, and I think it would be very interesting to ask it of someone like Pablo Lopez, someone I believe to be as much a student of the game as a prime athlete and skilled pitcher. I am guessing that the answer we might get is that, even if he doesn't like to admit it, he appreciates the occasional extra day between starts because it's a strain to pitch every 5 days without a break, and his performance will be better. But I'm not the athlete, just the asker, and it's only a guess on my part.

I want to say "no", mainly because of the simple math of "13-6=7" for the work to be spread among the bullpen arms. But if certain assumptions are true (or can be made to be true), maybe it works: If 28 starts instead of 32 starts results in a par of 7 innings per start instead of the current 6, due to there being more time to recover between starts, then you are back to your best starters pitching a good proportion of the season's innings. If your 40-man roster carries enough bullpen arms with minor-league options remaining, then you can identify your core of 5 or so relievers who you hope will stay with the big club all year, and shuttle the two remaining spots up and down to St Paul. Those shuttle relievers need to be worked like rented mules during their stints with the big club, and go to St. Paul mainly for rest and staying in tune, meaning that there is additional workload at St Paul for the castoff veterans that our front office is fond of signing. If instead the 40-man roster is littered with guys who have to be DFAed every time you send them to St Paul, you end up losing the good ones on waivers and wind up with a ragtag assortment of arms no one else wants. Meanwhile if one or more of your 6 starters is like SWR was last season, delivering 5 good(ish) innings per start, you begin to risk overworking your bullpen even if you use the shuttle system, because roster rules require you to leave a pitcher down there for many days at a time (they keep changing this and I can't remember the current rule). If the plan is to hook the starter at the first sign of trouble and 5 innings is satisfactory per start, then some other simple math takes over. 162*9=1458 innings to cover, and 5*28=140 innings per starter, times 6 equals 840 innings, leaving 618 innings to be covered by 7 spots in the bullpen. Last year the Twins bullpen pitched 588 innings, and many of us felt at the time that this was straining things with 8 arms. The manager and pitching coach would have to change their strategy with 6 starters, in the opposite direction they have trended - of trusting perhaps their top 3 veteran starters, but not the young'uns. So I still want to say "no". 😀

Silly observations aside, I really appreciate articles like this and, as a longtime SABR member and advocate, I want to also commend your use of the SABR Bio Project article on Reese without directly lifting passages from it. Your article rightly focuses on his time in Minnesota, mentioning the bomb-threat incident that the other bio didn't have, while the longer SABR piece delves into additional facets of his career and overall life. Good one!

ROCCO!!!!!! Whose career CAN'T you ruin???

In the classic Sherlock Holmes mystery, "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," the master sleuth proved conclusively that the dog did not bark because the dog didn't exist.

Sick burn, bro.

Totally fair, and true in spirit for all teams. With the aid of b-r.com I count 21 pitchers making relief appearances for Cleveland in 2024 but that counts Austin Hedges once. There are visits to the Injured List, so roster management is a complex undertaking that isn't fatally compromised by there being any specific number of option-less young guys. The Guardians had 7 guys with 50+ relief appearances, only two of whom had ERAs even as high as 3.50, so they were a fundamentally sound bullpen; thus it's interesting that they still needed to bring 14 additional guys into games (and perforce onto the active roster, not all at the same time), due no doubt to injury more so than ineffectiveness. I don't know their team at all, so it would be an instructive masterclass to follow their transactions from opening day to the end, keeping track of who they had to juggle in terms of roster rules. That's an effort I can assure you I won't be undertaking. 😀 (I didn't even mention the other side of the coin, fading veterans who can refuse a minor league assignment due to CBA rules. I trade or DFA those guys in OOTP too, once I get a whiff of unreliability going forward.)

That's the dilemma. Relievers are up-and-down so you have to have a really good one to be willing to gamble he's more up than down. Some of this comes down to where you are in the window of contention. To me, an arm like Henriquez is a dandy gamble for a team trying to enter a period of contention - he's at the right age where he could be an asset in 2026-28 or whatever (and if he isn't, oh well). But you have to get through 2025 first, and if the Twins are contending then he's less good of a gamble. Except, as mentioned, he's not the only one, with Tonkin in the picture also. But, the Best Bullpen in Baseball™ is for another thread.

I'll take the under, LOL. But when you are GMing the Best Bullpen in Baseball™, details like Tonkin are unimportant. 😀

IKR? Why don't they just hire me with all my OOTP chops and credentials?

Fantastic article by Will Leitch at mlb.com that kicks this whole thing off. They manage to name the 2031 WS participants and then say not one additional word about the Twins! Because, Mets. Yay!

Right-sizing is just one demonstration of their business plan. The REAL secret sauce is "always say the quiet part out loud." Like a James Bond villain.

A very fine bit of satire. I still am hoping RandBalls Stu will take a crack at something along the lines of "Twins have baseball's best walleye-on-a-stick vendor according to FangRaphs." Or maybe he could get really wacky and say "bullpen".

When I play Out of the Park as general manager, this is the kind of pitcher I look to get rid of from the 40-man during the off-season. Guys who are still trying to establish themselves, but no longer have minor-league options, are roster hazards once the regular season starts. If they get off to a bad start, they don't have the track record to let you choose to ride it out until they figure things out, and they can't be stashed in the minors at will so as to let them do that figuring-out thing, and it's the wrong time of year to work out a trade. Trade them in November and don't look back. Or if there is no trade market for the player, because trade value plummets once the options are exhausted, just DFA them and get it over with, using someone with more potential as replacement; if the player is lost on waivers, oh well, no looking back for that either. Not having someone better you want to protect is kind of a red flag at that point anyway. Or conversely, if you believe this one guy is about to break through and be solid, you the GM had better be right. OOTP is just a game, though, and written by people who necessarily embed their own point of view. Still, if "24-year olds with live arms and no minor league options" were one of those desirable "market inefficiencies," some real-life bottom-feeder team would have tried to corner the market by now and achieved great things. 😀

The lack of innings isn't solely due to injury. I specified major league innings, because in some seasons he put in more work than that but it was in the minors. A combination of injury plus not being good enough until he apparently put things together is worrisome. He's not without talent and is one of those guys who shows flashes for long enough to make you believe. Maybe this is the year....

Not sure. In those situations there is no "previous pitcher" whose ERA is affected, per the site. I just took the season total from baseball-reference.com. I assume that over the course of a season the extra innings more or less balance out. With 203 inherited runners (fewer than league average) and 83 of them scoring (above league average), I imagine that extra innings aren't the key factor.