markos

Sure. But I was factoring in that even a below-average GM, given 20 roster spots and $90M, should be able to scrape together an additional 10 WAR. Look at this terrible Twins team. If Dozier, Sano, Buxton, Kepler, Gibson and Berrios had combined for 30 WAR, the remaining players on this team, the worst team in baseball, (Grossman, Rosario, Nunez, Escobar, Santana, etc...) would have been enough to be in wildcard contention.

The argument for emulating the Cubs is that they have acquired and developed a cost-controlled core (Bryant, Rizzo, Russell, Baez, Arrieta, Hendricks) that you can basically pencil in for 30 WAR and will cost less than $25M both this season and next. At essentially any payroll level, that core is enough to put a team into contention. The Cubs financial resources are an advantage, but right now it is basically just pushing them from a 90+ team to a 100+ team. Of course, it will play a bigger roll after 2017 as they have to keep this core together.

Two thoughts... 1) As gunnarthor mentioned, the biggest problem is that they have graduated most (maybe all?) of their elite prospects. Buxton, Sano, Berrios are no longer in the minors, and they haven't had anyone of that caliber step up and replace them. Gordon, Jay and Gonsalves are all good, but there are good arguments for all three to be outside the top-50. But if you were to ignore top-50 prospects, I think the Twins stack up as well as any other organization. 2) If there is a drying up, I think it is mostly because there is a gap right now in A and A+, particularly on the position player side. There are a few interesting prospects, but there isn't really anyone with the tools and performance that projects as a superstar. Personally, I think it's a side effect of spending too many top picks on college relievers over the past few years.

It will be interesting to see if the Nationals offer him a qualifying offer. I can see a good argument that Ramos should take it and try to restore his value. Hard to know if any team will offer him a big-money deal if there are no guarantees he can catch again.

Hard to know right now if this is a good pick or not, but I'm cautiously optimistic. A lot will depend on who stays/goes in the org, and who he brings in from the outside. I feel like we will know more in another month.

My guess is that this metric is suffering either from some kind of double-counting - ex. Polanco's "number of games his team played" includes the MLB and AAA games, or from counting the games from the highest level - ex. Polanco, who ended 2015 at AA in early September, might have had a game total of 162 because he spent a limited amount of time in the majors.

The durability stat doesn't pass the sniff test for actual durability (avoiding injuries). Polanco hasn't been on the DL in 3 years, but has a low durability mark. Their durability methodology is a little funky... "Number of games a player has played compared to the numbers of games his team played. For pitchers, uses a formula that compares number of games pitched versus number of expected games pitched if pitched for a full season with this team. Bench players may not appear to be durable."

There were two recent examples from last fall. David Stearns left the Astros at the end of September even though they were still in the middle of the playoff race. And Billy Eppler left the Yankees in the beginning of October just before their playoff game. In both cases, they left for clear promotions. Echoing what Brock said, I also believe that lateral moves are discouraged while a person is still under contract.

I don't mean to be too negative here, but isn't this 100% on the development staff? Someone should have made the determination that he needed to get this fixed when he was in the minors. This is another example where it seems that development and promotions are determined by minor league success and less by preparedness for the majors.

Piggy-backing on diehardtwinsfan, I am definitely adjusting my priors based on the past few weeks of rumors. At the start of this process, I felt very strongly that: 1) There are only 30 jobs available, so almost by definition this position would be desirable. 2) I didn't expect that many candidates would turn the position down, and I didn't think anyone who wasn't currently a GM or POBO would decline to be interviewed. 3) I thought that the vote of confidence for Molitor in 2017 was essentially meaningless and at worse an extremely minor point. I am starting to seriously doubt all three. I am shocked - SHOCKED! - that both Cherrington and AA not just turned down the position but declined to even be interviewed. Individually they are kind of understandable - Cherrington more so - but I'm still very surprised. There has been a lot of rumors from various media sources that have really muddled the idea of what the position will actually be. Some have indicated that the new POBO would report to Dave St. Peter. Maybe the reason so many qualified candidates are declining the position early in the process is because the role being presented is very different than what the title would indicate. Similarly, the obsession with Molitor has made me wonder if the expectation is that the manager would have more voice in the player acquisition/development process than most organizations currently employ (and this would play into my own suspicions that Gardy had significant sway in decisions when Bill Smith was GM). In all, this is starting to feel a bit like the Angels GM position last year, where it was very clear to everyone that the new GM would be limited by a meddlesome owner and a powerful manager.

Really? That is a pretty big change. Across the league, the Director of Baseball Operations is a spot below GM. For example, Farhan Zaidi had that title with the A's when Billy Beane was GM. Also, see http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/cubs-hire-25-old-director-baseball-operations-010712430--mlb.html

I don't think they will have to wait too long. David Stearns was hired by the Brewers on September 21st while the Astros were in the midst of a pennant race. The Angels hired Billy Eppler on October 4th, two days before their wildcard game.

I think this article (and others like it) are more about setting expectations. He isn't saying that they shouldn't explore trading Dozier. Looking at all the variables with Dozier's current market and recent history of similar players, there is a decent chance that Dozier is still in a Twins uniform in April because no other team was willing to pay full price for him. It would be a very different market and different expectations if the Twins had a starter or closer of similar value instead.

Especially since Donaldson had 4 seasons of team control left compared to Dozier's 2, and he was almost a year younger.

I think the identification, drafting/signing and development of pitching talent has been a problem. If it wasn't, I would expect there to be a sizeable amount of pitching talent acquired/developed by the Twins that found success elsewhere - think someone like Arrieta or Kluber. This is a very quick and dirty analysis (please correct me if I'm missing anyone), but consider the following: 296 pitchers have started at least 1 game so far this year. On average, each of the 30 teams should produce 9-10 of the starters. By my quick peruse through the list, the Twins have just 6: Kyle Lohse Matt Garza Kyle Gibson Pat Dean Jose Berrios Tyler Duffey If you break it down by total starts, there have been 4,272, or 142 per team. The above-listed starters have contributed only 81. By innings, it is ~24,000, or 800 per team. The Twins starters have ~400. And if you expand it to pitcher that the Twins acquired in the minors and developed, that only adds Liriano, right? (Quick aside... Do the Twins have ANY international free agents that have found success as a starter?) Unless I'm missing some players, the gap between the Twins' pitcher and average is large enough that it can't be explained away by draft position differences alone.

I agree so much with this. The real problem is their incredible inability to develop or acquire even average pitchers. It is really staggering. From 2011 - 2016, the AL average ERA for starters was 4.21. The Twins have given 30 pitchers at least 5 starts during that timeframe. Here is the list of those who managed to be above average: Scott Baker: 3.21 (21 starts) Ervin Santana: 3.75 (43 starts) Phil Hughes: 4.19 (68 starts) That's it. 950 total starts over that time span, and only 13% were average or better.

But that isn't exactly the situation here. The manager was already picked back in 2014, and he is under contract until Nov 2017. And this isn't just personal loyalty; it is also the expense - it will cost $1M+ to fire Molitor after this season. Personally, I don't think it is crazy for the owner to decide that he doesn't want to pay the $1M+ for Molitor to not coach next season. And frankly, I'd rather see any new GM keep Molitor and use the savings (from not having to pay two managers) to invest in players (draft or international signings) or scouting, analytics, and player development expansions. So as long as the new PBO has free reign after 2017, then I don't think it is a big deal. (Though I do concede that I think Molitor has been a poor manager this year for the development of many (all?) of the young players, and that there is a case that paying $1M+ for Molitor to go away might be money well spent...)

I don't think this impacts the GM candidate at all. Of all the front office changes in the past few years, I think Dipoto with the Mariners was the only one to immediately fire the manager. Everyone else (Boston, Toronto, San Diego, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, LA Dodgers, Atlanta) kept the current manager for at least the start of the next season. But it could definitely change things if the Pohlads demanded some say in ANY future manager changes. That would be a potential game-changer. But I don't think there is anything wrong with saying Molitor will start the 2017 season as the manager (regarding the GM search).

I kind of disagree with this take. As you alluded in the original article, going into this season there were two big question marks with Jay: will his stuff hold up as a starter, and will his body hold up. From everything I've read (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the answer to the first question was 'yes'. His velocity was still above-average as a starter, and his breaking stuff was still above-average to plus. And he kept his stuff throughout starts despite regularly throwing 90+ pitches and facing 20+ batters. That was one pretty big hurdle that he needed to cross, and I think that he cleared it. But the question of durability is still pretty open. He was injured and shut down early. Well, that obviously isn't good. But pitchers get hurt all the time, so it is hard to know if this injury is strong evidence one way or the other about starting. It isn't a good sign, that's for sure. But it certainly isn't a death sentence on his starting career. So in his path on transitioning to a starter, I think, overall, that it is less doubtful than at the start of the season. More doubt with durability for sure, but the is a lot less doubt about his stuff. So I feel like Jay moved one full step forward (stuff held up!) and a half step back (sore shoulder). And that is a net positive.

3. The POBO decided that they needed time to evaluate Antony (and others), and the best way to do that is to leave them in place. 4. The POBO's top choice for GM is currently unavailable due to contract constraints, and they decided to temporarily hang on to Antony until said person is available.

My guess is that the new POBO will hire a new GM fairly quickly, but that the remainder of the staff will be fairly stable for the first year or so, for two reasons: 1) When hiring someone from another organization (particularly someone already under contract), there are usually non-competes that prevent the person from bringing other people from that organization. 2) While teams a generally pretty good about letting front office personnel leave for a promotion in another organization, they generally cannot move to another org for a lateral move until their contract is up. So, if AA was signed as POBO, he probably could only get one or two people currently in the Toronto or LA front offices. But as contracts expire over the months/years, it wouldn't be shocking to see a fair amount of turnover as scouts/coaches/directors/assistants that AA likes become available.

Sano and Buxton are free agents after the 2021 season. Kepler after 2022. They have a couple years yet before they need to start worrying about their window closing and making panic moves.

I think they were many very, very clear mistakes. You can argue about some (the Greinke signing and the Miller trade, for example) But the AZ front office clearly did not know the rules in many cases. They offered trades that were illegal. They didn't know the rules of international signings. They lost decent players via inexplicable 25-/40-man roster moves. There are many other examples, both rumors and in the public, that do not need the benefit of hindsight. There is a basic level of competency that they did not demonstrate.

I think a better "cautionary tale" for the Twins isn't the Diamondbacks but rather the Padres. AJ Preller came in with a plan to putting a winning team on the field ASAP, gutted the farm system of almost all the old regime's prospects, and had most of those moves blow up in his face. They are now pretty terrible and basically rebuilding the farm system from scratch. It isn't hard to see a scenario with this Twins team where the new GM is hired, in part, due to the promise of a quick turn-around, and subsequently the farm system is used to acquire middling, older players to try to compete next year. In my view, that would be a mistake and the team should really be building for 2018+ for contention (though some smaller moves on the margins to improve the rotation/bullpen could certainly go a long way in 2017).

I suspect that they are gone, but I can see a decent argument that they deserve one more year due to the injuries they've had to deal with this season.