Oxtung

You're making a big assumption that all it takes is one season in the majors to prepare the young guys regardless if they've spent 1 season above A-ball or 3. I think it more likely that pushing players that quickly leads to more Hicks like lost seasons. Why not let the players arrive when they are ready even if that means a few replacement players before then?

I also have the Pirates at 5. I was just saying that I don't see a strong alternative to the Pirates. My 3 "top of the rotation" possibilities for the Pirates didn't include Kingham, btw. Taillon, Glasnow and Heredia are the 3 I was talking about. I think it's too early to judge McGuire or Meadows based on the few AB's they got this season.

You bring up an interesting discussion topic, as Markos alluded to, is a premier player or two worth more than 3 or 4 top 100 players? Personally I'll take quantity over quality. The failure rate of prospects is so high, even of elite prospects, that I downgrade a system like the Cards. I looked through all the teams top prospects the other day and IMO they break down into 4 groups. Group 1 are the teams like the Twins with elite talent and depth. Every team has 6+ top 100ish prospects and a premier player. Astros, Cubs, Red Sox, Twins and the Pirates. Group 2 doesn't quite have the depth but has 4+ top 100 prospects. They also have some very intriguing players that could quickly become top 100 prospects. The Mets, Dodgers, Royals, Rays and Marlins fall into this category (though to be fair the Mets have Syndergaard and d'Arnaud who could be considered premier). Group 3 teams either have 3-4 top 100 prospects, one might be elite, or 2-3 top 100 prospects but 2 of them are elite. This is the biggest group and includes the Indians, D-Backs, Rockies, Cards, Mariners, Rangers, Phillies, Reds, Blue Jays and the Nationals. The Cardinals could fit anywhere from 11-22. I'd put them somewhere in the middle because I don't think they have quite as much depth as some of the other systems. Group 4 teams are just B. A. D. Let's say it all together, BAD. A's, Padres, Giants, Tigers, Braves, White Sox, Brewers and Angels. I think you're selling the Mets system quite a bit short. They have 2 premier prospects in Syndergaard and d'Arnaud and a very nice pitcher in Montero. In addition Wilmer Flores, Steven Matz, Kevin Plawecki and Cesar Puello were all listed in the "Honorable Mention" section of Sickels top 75 list. They also have Dominic Smith who was their 1st round pick in 2013 and was considered the top prep bat of the draft. Dilson Herrera is an intriguing 2B prospect that has the tools to be ranked in the future. The Royals have a much better system than the Cardinals as well. In addition to the 4 he mentions they also have Hunter Dozier and Sean Manaea from this years draft. Bubba Starling, if he can ever put his tools together, and Jorge Bonifacio are both intriguing. John Lamb has had injury problems but was a very good pitcher a few years ago. I'd take the Mariner's Walker, Hultzen, Paxton, Peterson foursome over the Cardinals Taveras, Martinez, Wong, ??? (assuming Hultzen's injury isn't career ending). Though part of that is because I value pitchers much more than OF's and 2B. The Indians I'll give you, though I aboslutely LOVE Lindor. I'd trade Sano or Buxton for Lindor. Boom. Done.

Leaving money on the table makes no sense. It doesn't get saved and used later. You're just wasting resources. If you want to have $30million available 2 years from now then structure the contracts to make it happen. You could front load contracts now or overspend to get a player expected to sign for 3 years to instead sign for 2. There are ways to improve the team in the present and still have money available in the future without wasting resources.

And what else? Those are 2 premier players and a really nice one. Once you get past that they have a bunch of question marks. If Gonzalez, Jenkins, Kaminsky all pan out and Gast returns to form from his injury they could move up quickly but at this point they are all too iffy to rate the system very highly.

The Pirates have 3 potential top of the rotation arms, not including Cole, and top 10 positional prospects at OF, SS and Catcher. Six players ranked in Sickels' end of season top 75 prospects list. They also have another 5 players probably in the 100-200 range. There is plenty of talent here to warrant a top 5 system ranking. Who do you think should replace them in the top 5?

I agree with most people here. The Twins will end up in the 3-5 range with the Astros (1), Cubs (2), Red Sox, and Pirates. I think the next set of teams include Royals, Rays, Mets and Dodgers. I think the Marlins probably have more young talent than any team, they just push it to the majors so quickly. If you add Jose Fernandez (20 yo), Yelich (21 yo) and Stanton (23 yo) to their "prospect" list they are the clear cut #1 team. That doesn't even include the other 5 or so players 25 or younger that were top 100 prospects at some point and are currently on their major league roster. They are absolutely chalk full of young talent. I think I'm in the minority but I don't really like the Cards system. I would put them somewhere in the middle. #18 +/- 5. Remember they graduated around 4 top 100 players this season. That said, they do a great job helping guys improve so I have no doubt they will churn out some solid players that I currently don't like.

If a company goes outside the organization 3 or 4 times and passes over an employee for multiple positions because they find better candidates and that employee ends up leaving then what has the company actually lost? If your best people aren't as good as the outside talent then it sounds like something needs to change and your employees leaving isn't a bad start. In fact perhaps that is where it should start. With pink slips. Or perhaps with better training. Either way it shouldn't result in a promotion just because someone happens to reside within your company. I'm not making any statements about whether the Twins should or shouldn't clean out their house, just making some general comments.

Let's flip this around because it might be easier to answer. What have the Twins done that is innovative? Off the top of my head: 1) Aggressively pursue intl FA's in Australia and Europe. To date though this has provided almost nothing to the major league club, to be fair there are a few nice prospects that might turn the perception around. Of course their pursuit of Australia and Europe were a result of being late to Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. At best this seems like a double edged sword. 2) The Twins marketing team clearly has something going for them. Bloomberg's recent analysis ranked the Twins 17th in Attendance and yet 8th in Gate Receipts. That is pretty impressive. Of course the Twins are far behind in the local media TV deals. So again, double edged. 3) Perhaps something on the scouting side of things. I am not informed enough in what the Twins are doing or what their competitors are to make any judgements. The scuttlebutt implies the Twins are a great scouting team though. 4) Depending on how you view the Twins FO one could claim their insular attitude and hiring practices are innovative. The Twins certainly haven't been innovative with respect to Japanese/Cuban international free agents. Traditional FA is another no. Ryan has made some good trades that have been almost universally liked but none were particularly innovative. Whether there are one or more people within the stats department the Twins aren't pushing the boundaries with advanced metrics. Defensive shifts? Platooning? No and No. Experimentation with the definition of starting rotation, perhaps dropping to 4 starters or limiting innings or piggybacking pitchers? Nope. How about using your best reliever outside of the traditional "closer" role so that he can effect more innings and situations? Pitch framing? Over-budget on international FA's? Scoff, Guffaw and *eye roll*. Perhaps some of those are good ideas. Perhaps none are. Perhaps the Twins have good reasons for not embracing these ideas, I don't know. What I do know is that when you are the worst franchise in baseball over a 3 year time period something needs to change. What you have been doing isn't working. When I look at the Twins I just don't see those changes. I don't see the innovation, the trying of new and creative ideas to jump start the organization. If you always do what you've always done then you'll always get what you've always got.

Not to drag this off topic but I did a small study on this (SSS applies). Last years closers split like this: 11 were starters all the way through the minors and into the majors. 6 were full time relievers in the minors and 3 began as starters but converted to reliever while they were still in the minors. So it's almost a 50:50 split by the time they reach the majors. Some teams didn't have a defined closer or it wasn't clear the closer was going stay the closer for long so that's why there is only 20.

I think another thing to keep in mind when discussing Walker vs. Harrison is that this was both players first go at full season ball. Through the first 90 games of the season the two were almost identical players. Walker had a .870 OPS and Harrison an .869. Harrison walked a bit more and Walker hit for a little more power but overall they were very similar offensively. Over the remaining 45 games though things went very differently. Walker finished up nicely, OPS'ing .794. On the other hand Harrison fell off a cliff OPS'ing only .595. His BB% and K% stayed pretty much the same but his BA and especially his SLG% disappeared. Over his last 41 games Harrison hit only 4 doubles and no HR's. To me that suggests that he hit a wall and just couldn't put any power into his swing. If he was really struggling with his mechanics or if pitchers had caught up to him his K% would have increased and his BB% would have decreased significantly, but they didn't. If you make the assumption that the first 90 games are the real Harrison (and Walker too, though he didn't really struggle much towards the end of the season) then you're left with two very similar players. However, like others have said, Harrison walked 12% of the time and Walker only 6%. Combine that with the fact that Harrison is a full year younger and played no college ball and while I think they're pretty close, Harrison probably should be ranked slightly higher.

Thanks! This is exactly what I was wondering earlier.

In addition to what drivelikejehu already stated, which was a fantastic rebuttal, the man making the signing decisions is not the same man who signed Mauer to that contract. Ryan has stated several times that he is unwilling to sign players to long term or big money deals. The biggest contract he has ever given out is 4 years and $40 million to a 25 year old Johan Santana who was coming off of a stunning year (he posted an ERA+ of 182!!!) for which he won the Cy Young award.

I certainly wouldn't mind. But that comes with many caveats. There are some players for whom it is extremely hard to predict what their price will be in FA. Josh Johnson also comes to mind. Will they receive a qualifying offer? Are they looking/receiving a 1 year make good deal or will they end up signing a long term and higher money offer? So my answer ranges anywhere from YES!!!! if he signs a 1 year make good offer and isn't extended a qualifying offer to NO!!!! if he signs a 4 year $60 million contract and the Twins have to give up a draft pick because of a qualifying offer. The devil is in the details, as they say.

I feel I need to clarify this a little bit because my explanation of WPA wasn't entirely accurate. I was trying to convey the idea in the simplest way and I lost some of the accuracy. WPA doesn't explicitly use the Leverage Index. It instead is automatically built into the way WPA is calculated. For instance, if the Twins hit a home run in the first inning their chances of winning go up but not dramatically because there are still 8 innings to play. So the WPA added for that home run is small. On the other hand if the Twins hit a home run in the 9th inning of a tied game their probability of winning that game increases significantly. So the WPA add for the 9th inning home run would be significant. So you can see that Leverage Index, which is in itself a statistic, is not actually used in the Win Probability Added statistic. I was simply trying to show that late game and close game situations are more valuable than early or blow out situations. There is a statistic, WPA/LI, that uses both Win Probability Added and Leverage Index. It attempts to strip the late and close game bonus that is automatically a part of WPA out so that 2 players contributions can be compared even if they don't fill the same roll on a team. For instance, Ryan Pressly pitched almost exclusively in low leverage situations. That isn't his fault, the manager made those decisions. So what if you want to compare him to Glen Perkins? Well if you use WPA Perkins (2.8 WPA) is clearly going to be better than Pressly (0.2 WPA) because Perkins was frequently in high leverage situations. So WPA/LI is a way to remove the advantage that Perkins gets and puts them on a level playing field. So what does WPA/LI say about Pressly (0.5 WPA/LI) versus Perkins (1.2 WPA/LI)? Well as you can see Perkins was still a better pitcher than Pressly even if they were used in the same roles.

The more we go round and round about FA's and why they sign, the more I come to one conclusion: it doesn't matter. The GM's job is to improve the baseball team and FA is one route to that. Perhaps FA's sign for money or perhaps for family reasons, perhaps because of population or location, perhaps because his daughter loves purple unicorns and thinks Minnesota is where they live. Maybe Minnesota is a hard place to draw free agents to but at the end of the day it is still the GM's job to make it happen. Maybe that means offering the most money, or pimping the local community, or the arts, or the outdoors. Maybe it means hiring extra employees whose sole job is to do extra thorough research on a FA so you know exactly what drives his decisions and then putting extra pressure in the appropriate places. At the end of every conversation about FA's we need to realize that signing good players is a part of every GM's job description. It doesn't matter if it is easy or hard to sign players, it is still a requirement. Making excuses for a person failing to do their job doesn't help improve the product on the field and won't help bring home that big shiny trophy we all want to see some time soon. Will Terry Ryan be capable of bringing in the necessary talent upgrades; I don't know. He didn't the last two offseasons. He is now in his 3rd year and the clock is ticking.

I think this isn't getting enough attention. We all wish the Twins would sign multiple pitchers to "big" contracts. 2 or 3 contracts each with >2 years on the deals would seem like a god send for this rotation. But when you get right down to it the Twins aren't going to do that. At best the Twins will sign 1 of those deals (even that is highly questionable). So to me we should be asking ourselves, is this the player we want to go with? Is he the best FA signing we want to see signed this off season? Clearly this is dependent on that 3/$21 number being roughly representational. If his value drops considerably into the 1 or 2 year deal then the above does not apply.

I don't know the answer to any of your questions, I'm not sure anybody does, but they are great questions.

But perhaps the only path to the really big money. Ryu and Darvish are making good money but not great until their contract expires. They won't be FA's until they are 32 and 31 years old respectively. It seems unlikely they will be signed to one of the 7 to 8 year mega contracts that are currently the rage at that stage of their careers. If a pitcher, like Darvish let's say, feels like he is going to be an absolute stud then financially it might make sense to come over early, work your way up through the minors and make it to arbitration. Certainly that is considerably more risky but the potential reward is also much greater. Another factor in the decision making process, and one I don't know the answer to, is how much these guys are making in Japan/Korea. Does anybody know?

First off pretty cool video. I think you've made an error though in your choice of words. You said "The Twins could have up to $25-$30 million dollars to spend...." That is just not true. They will have at a minimum that much. You also have to consider that they will be recieving another $25-$30 million in additional revenue via MLB. Then, as someone stated above they weren't at their limit last season either. Forbes estimated their 2012 revenue (2013 isn't out yet that I know of) at $214 million. That likely decreased a bit in 2013 but if you use the Twins 52% rule the payroll could have been as high as perhaps $100 million in 2013. When you add it all up I think it would be more accurate to say the Twins could have up to $70 million dollars. It obviously depends on where their revenue really stands at and how the Twins handle the new money being distributed this season, but when you're using the words "up to" you're talking about the most money a team can spend and any way you cut it that will be more than $25-$30 million. There were eleven FA starting pitchers signed for the 2013 season that qualified for the ERA title and posted better ERA's than Correia. Five posted sub-3.00 ERA's and another three of those posted sub-3.50 ERA's. R.A. Dickey had an ERA almost identical to Correia's. Failure certainly happened and when it did it came in 3 varieties. Just poor pitching, Dempster, Haren, Jackson, Blanton, Pelfrey and Saunders fall into this catagory; players with injuries, Baker, McCarthy, Marcum, Marquis; and fliers that didn't succeed like Erik Bedard, Derek Lowe, Roy Oswalt, Rich Harden, etc...

I'm not sure if you're asking for this but if you want explanations of the stats that are tossed around on this site frequently they are available, for the most part, on Fangraphs website. At the top of that page there are tabs for Offensive stats, defensive stats, pitching stats, WAR, etc.... If you're just looking for a quick overview of the statistics presented in the article or in this thread so far I can give you my understanding of them (feel free to skip this post if you feel you already understand these statistics). ERA is obviously the most basic and well known of the statistics available for pitchers. ERA+ and ERA- are essentially just ERA that has been changed into an easier to read/use format. So an average ERA is always going to be 100 no matter what year you're looking at. ERA+ comes from baseball-reference.com and better pitchers are given values >100. ERA- comes from fangraphs.com and for this statistic better pitchers are given values <100. Otherwise they are very similar statistics with some small nuances. However ERA is very dependent on factors outside of a pitchers control. The ballpark he pitches in, his defense behind him or just random luck, does a ball fall in for a hit when it shouldn't? Which is called babip or batting average on balls in play. Essentially when contact is made what percentage of the time does it fall for a hit. To eliminate those factors people started to creat DIPS theory, or defense independent pitching statistics. The most popular of these currently are FIP and xFIP. The theory at the time these statistics were created was that pitchers could only control how many batters they struck out, walked and how many home runs they allowed. Accordingly the FIP formula only takes those 3 things into account to determine how well a pitcher actually pitched. Then there is some fancy math done to make the result look like a traditional ERA number. So if a players FIP (let's say a 5.18) is bad on an ERA scale (an ERA of 5.18 is obviously awful) then it is also a bad FIP number. xFIP is the same thing as FIP except that it includes how many home runs a pitchers should have given up based on league average home run rates instead of how many home runs a pitcher actually gave up. This makes strikeouts, walks and flyball rate the only factors that matter. For a several years this was the go to stat. It was the best at determining how well a pitcher actually pitched as well as the best at predicting the next seasons ERA. Some types of pitchers didn't seem to play nicely with FIP and xFIP, however. Knuckleballers and players like Tim Hudson consistently seemed to have lower ERA's than their FIP or xFIP suggest they should have. It has since been acknowledged that pitchers can control how many groundballs they produce versus how many flyballs and line drives. Fly balls are turned into outs the most frequently but they can also go for home runs and extra base hits. Line drives are clearly bad all around. Ground balls, while going for hits slightly more frequently than fly balls, rarely turn into extra base hits and never into home runs. So after quite a bit of research and debate it was determined that ground ball pitchers allow fewer runs than fly ball pitchers, all else being equal, and that it is a controllable skill. That bred the most recent statistics like tERA (the "t" stands for true) and the latest, and currently best (at least that I am aware of), statistic called SIERA. These use a pitcher's strike out, walk and home run rates, just like FIP and xFIP, but it also adds in how a pitcher pitches. Is he a ground ball pitcher or fly ball? What's his line drive percentage? It also takes into account what stadium a player pitches in. A home run at Yankee Stadium might not be a home run at Target Field. FIP, xFIP, tERA and SIERA are all known as ERA estimators as they are attempting to determine what a pitchers true skill level was. As such these can be used, cautiously, to determine what a pitchers following season will look like as well. There is another line of thought however. Some people don't care about ERA because it is too vague of a statistic. A home run is a home run; the previous statistics don't differentiate between a home run allowed when your team is winning 7-0 or when your team is tied in the bottom of the 9th inning. Clearly the home run when you're up 7-0 means much less than a home run in the bottom of the ninth of a tie ball game. There are two basic premises of Win Probability Added (WPA) and similar stats. First, a pitcher (or batter or fielder as these stats work equally well for offensive players) is more valuable, in either a positive or negative way, in close or late game situations than he is early on during the game or in blow outs. This is referred to as the Leverage Index. The later in the game and the closer the score the higher the Leverage Index. Second, because we have an extensive history of the play by play of baseball we can determine the average outcome for any given situation. We can then compare how much better or worse Mike Pelfrey did than the average pitcher. Another way to say that is we can determine how much Mike Pelfreys actions affect the Twins probability of winning a game, for better or worse, when compared to an average pitcher. Imagine Pelfrey faces a bases loaded situation. We can look back and determine what an average pitcher actually did in that situation, let's say the generic pitcher gave up a hit and 2 runs. If Pelfrey strikes a batter out we know that he actually increased the Twins odds of winning the ball game when compared to the generic pitcher that allowed 2 runs. If Pelfrey's next pitch is hit for a home run he has now decreased the probability of the Twins winning compared to the generic pitcher. When you add up all of the changes in probability throughout a game, or season, and then factor in the Leverage Index you get the stat Win Probability Added. For WPA a 0 is average and for every whole number above zero one win has been added to the team's win total. Similarly every number below zero is a game lost that an average pitcher wouldn't have. Well I didn't mean to write a novel, but for the second time today it seems I have. I didn't touch on all the statistics but those are several. If you have questions about any others or feel I misrepresented a statistic above feel free to ask or correct me. Again, sorry for the novel.

If you want to dive a little deeper into Pelfrey's stats you find that WPA, WPA/LI and RE24 were all negative. Fangraph's valued his four-seamer, sinker, spliter, slider and curveball as below average based on data gathered by Pitch f/x. In the past his four-seamer has always been an above average pitch (except 2009) and some of those seasons it has been well above average. Perhaps the most damning bit of evidence is that his swinging strike rate was the worst of his career, which was not good to begin with, while both his in-zone and out-of-zone contact rates were at career highs.

First off, good for Berardino for going with a well researched, stats heavy article. Some of the luster wears off of Pelfrey when you realize that fangraph's WAR is based off of FIP. They are 2 sides of the same coin. FIP liked Pelfrey and accordingly so does fWAR. The problem as I see it is that his ERA, tERA, ERA-/+, xFIP and SIERA all indicate that he was a bad pitcher in 2013. It gets worse when you realize that the strongest predictors of future performance are SIERA followed by xFIP.

I have never met Terry Ryan and therefore feel uncomfortable talking about his personality and any traits he may posses. However, I do have an uncle that seems to approach decisions in a similar manner, so I'll write about him and let people draw their own conclusions. My uncle spent his entire career in sales for a nationally recognized shoe brand. He was very good at his job and retired while in his early 40's. He lives in a private community here in the cities where house values are in the 7 figures. Essentially he has enough money that he will never have to worry about affording something. He also has a unique way of looking at the world, it may have been what made him so successful at his job. When he is looking to buy a service or product his first step isn't to look around for the best deal, instead it is to decide what he believes that product or service is worth. How much would it cost for my uncle to do or make it himself? He doesn't care what the going rate is, only what he thinks the value should be. So, when his home owners association set out to contract their landscaping services he had a price in mind that he was looking for. When none of the bids came back as reasonable, in his mind, he told the other home owners that he would take on the landscaping duties himself and told them what his fee would be, which was significantly less than the professionals. So, every summer my cousin and I would find ourselves out landscaping with my uncle because the "pros" didn't meet his price point expectations. Now, that sounds like just being cheap, and I'm not sure that it isn't, but that is only one side of the equation. On the other hand, he will spend when he thinks something meets his price point expectations. One of his first jobs was as a regional sales representative for said shoe brand. He was responsible for North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota sales. He needed a vehicle that was capable of getting him around safely, economically and reliably, over long distances. His decision was to buy a brand new Mercedes-Benz. In his low 20's he knew it would be a stretch to afford it, he had to significantly leverage himself those first few years, and had to make sacrifices to make it work. However, at the time Mercedes-Benz were much more reliable than American made vehicles, less time in the shop meant more time selling, it would last much longer (he still owns it today though it doesn't get driven very often), and it was a diesel so it got better gas mileage than all of his other alternatives. So, in the end this seemingly expensive car would meet all of his criteria and, 15 years down the road, be a better deal. It met his price point expectations. Is my uncle cheap? Well, he shops at dollar stores, Wal-Mart, Menards and Costco almost exclusively. He does his own (and his neighbors) landscaping even though it wouldn't scratch his pocketbook to hire a company to do it for him. Hell, he even makes his own stakes for tacking down landscaping cloth because he doesn't feel the options commercially available are of a high enough quality and cost too much. Is my uncle a big spender? Well, he has some very valuable pieces of art work and relics that he has collected from around the world on his travels. One time he paid a company to custom make a shotgun for a lady friend who wanted to try out hunting for the first time. She was left handed, short and slight of frame and nothing commercially available met my uncle's expectations. At times my uncle seems like a miser, at other times he is a spendthrift, but in the end I don't think either description is particularly accurate. He is just a man that views the world through a unique lens and has very strong opinions about the value of things. It has been a blessing and a curse, he is set for life financially and can afford to do anything he wants, yet he doesn't have a wife or children because he drives away those who might love him with his strong ideas and opinions. So that is my uncle. You can take away from that what you wish and make your own determinations if that applies to Mr. Ryan or not. P.S. Sorry this post was so long but I couldn't find a good way to shorten it without compromising the complexities of my uncle.