old nurse

If Romero and Mejia are on a pattern of pitching 2-3 innings twice a week that shifts things considerably.

I would rather see a prospect list of 20 high ceiling prospects than one that contained 10. Lower ceiling players are always available cheaply to fill in. . See Odorizzi, Perez, Austin, Cave, and other pieces the team has easily picked up. High end major league players are not so easily picked up.

It would be hard to call any of them stars og 2 sports. High level players, but not stars

If you look at it as a system that pays players for what they did during the season they are playing then you are correct it is a very broken system. The bulk of the money has gone to player that have not performed. It is not the player's fault that got paid, On the other hand it is easy to see why some owners outside the larger markets might be risk adverse.

Should I have explained things better. In 9 years 30 teams cpild only find 20 free agents that averaged more than 2 war a season. Note that at 2 war that is Kepler the last 3 seasons. Old Terry Ryan did good. He picked Erv and was right

Well, Sherzer, Greinke, Cano, Betre and Hunter off the top of my head. There really wasn't and organized pattern on many of these players. BJ nee Melvin Upton declined at 28. A quite a few player did well their last year. Tracking WAR per year was looking too sporadic too continue. I would see on most of the 3 year people would have one good year and 2 bad ones. 2 year people generaly did not do well either year. That is why I quit trying to compute on them.

As the title states, why it is so hard to build with free agents. This is a look back on what happened after the contracts were signed. What kind of return did the team get for the money. Building blocks are those players that produce more than 2 war. Fangraphs defines a 2 war player as a solid player. They define a 3 war player as a good player. for numbers above that they have superlative kinds of words. For looking up WAR I used baseball reference as it was much easier. I excluded relief pitchers from consideration for several reasons. 1. I am not sure that WAR measures what they do well enough to compare them to position players. Over a 4 year period very few seem to break a cumulative 8 WAR. 2 is obtainable. That is a great reliever, not a solid one. It just did not seem comparable. I used the ESPN tracker for years and dollars. For the contracts that have not been completed I used what Bref said they were paid. AAV might have been better as Pujols and Sherzer's contracts are pretty back loaded. I did not give any discounts for injury plagued years. The player was still paid. If the player was released, the years and money counted. If the player retired, the years and money did not count. The Grieinke rule. If you opted out at three years, it was a 3 year contract. FWIW, that was the only great 3 year contract. I wished I had a computer spreadsheet that I knew how to blow numbers into and do calculations on the data. Life would have been easier. The data I present will be from players who signed contracts 4 years or longer. I started looking at 2 year and 3 year contracts, but the numbers were looking horrid. Upon further consideration, I decided 2 and three year contracts are more bridging than building. From the free agent class of 2006 to 2014 66 players signed long term deals. 6 of them averaged 5 WAR or more for the 4 years prior to free agency 12 4-5 WAR 25 the 3-4 WAR, 15 2-3 WAR. There were 7 7 that did not average 2 WAR the previous 4 years. Nick Markasis was one of these. In years 2-5 he was a 4 WAR player. Ervin Santana was another. He has 5 solid years on his resume to go with the 5 bad ones. Adam Dunn, Gil Meche, Jeff Suppan, Omar Infante and Brandon McCarthy were the other 5. Of the 6 5+ War players Beltre and Cano were the only ones to maintain that. Pujols, A Rod, Teixara faded from greatness, Matt Holiday faded to very good status. Of the 12 4 WAR Cliff Lee maintained, Max Scherzer became magnificent, Buerle, and Sabathia were in the high 2. The other 6 averaged well below 2 but none have finished as a negative. 66 free agents. 20 have bwar that average 2 or more for this time period. As a group they earned 1.833 billion dollars., played 116 seasons of baseball and averaged earning 15.8 million a year. They accumulated 337.6 bwar. They averaged 2.91 WAR. Their cost ber bwar comes out to 5.4 million. Still should be less than 6 if one used AAV for Scherzer and Pujols. I am not sure were back loaded enough to make a difference. 66 free agents. 46 of them were not so good. They played 209 seasons. They accumulated 145.3 bwar. That averages out to .7 bwar per year. They earned 3.827 billion dollars. That works out to 18.3 million a year, or 26.33 million per war. Given that this is over 9 years the takeaway is that more than twice as many free agents fell below being a solid player than not. The players with a high bwar were not immune. to falling into mediocrity, 7 out of 18 below 2 war, half ended up below 2.5 for the contract. Of the 48 players who averaged below 4 WAR only 6 maintained an average over 2 bwar. That is why it is hard to build with free agents.

I have not mentioned do not sign players because they get hurt. Are you are reading what you want into the post? My point was simply that very few longer term free agent signings have worked out.

People want these players. What is their proof that long term deals are good?

Lester's fwar would say he declining, bwar is all over the place. k% is going down, bb% is going up, velo is going down. 4 out of 6 years is good.

In your line of thinking I read it as sign Machado or Harper solves everything. All will be duckies and bunnies if only the Twins sign every last player they can. Now the first thing you would type would likely be "I didn't say that" so why put up words I did not say and then challenge me to defend them? My point was pretty simple in print. Not many times do long term free agents work out. If that they are 26 means they will work out for the length of the contract, 28 and 29 year olds should work out great on 5 year contracts, 30-31 year olds on 3 year contracts. This is simply not the case

Jason Heyward was 26 when he signed his long term deal. fwar 1,1 and 2 post signing. There is nothing saying that being 26 is the end all. There are many free agents signing at 28, 29 who do not meat their prior performances. there are many who do.

Other than Beltre and Hunter, very few longer term free agent signings have worked. Scherzer and Cano are in the middle of their deals, they are working out so far. Many have one or two good years then are unproductive.

Killebrew was not a free agent them. I doubt that Killebrew was paid 15-20% of a payroll like Harper is seeking. Harper would not like to play for 3x the average salary of a player like Killebrew did in his prime.

If they spent top dollar on Darvish as SP, Davis and McGee as relievers the Twins would not have been a better team.

So you believe a high school drop out?

You completely missed my point .

The good thing about prospect lists is that the author really can't be wrong and also they are almost never right.

When Harper or Machado has done what Betts or Trout has done you can call them generational talents.

Ah but is the competition so fierce you need a fifth to mull over the fourth?

A glance at the Rochester roster showed over 50 players added by the Twins from other organizations the last 2 years . This team is really Texas-Cleveland castoff haven.

The Forbes calculations do not include equity nor profit from regional sports networks. Revenue calculations are based on taxes paid. Sales tax records are public. The profit is an educated guess as they do not have the exact costs of the operations. The operation being how much the teams put into scouting, training, putting on the show, management costs and more

Harper, Machado, Kuechel, and Kimbrel not being signed shows how limited the shopping is. Corbin, Pollack and Grandal are the only ones signed. Only Corbin got the kind of offer expected.

The Giants fought tooth and nail to keep the A's from moving to Santa Clara and you are trying to downplay the significance of stadium revenue.

The Indians were drawing 3 million back in the day. The Forbes estimate on revenue per fan is $86. Getting another half million fans is about what the dollars not being spent to be called cheap,