markos

I have to admit, I really like the deal for the Phillies. I'm biased against oft-injured A-ball pitchers, so the idea of getting arguably the best catcher in baseball for the next two seasons for a high-risk pitching asset, a catcher than has been a below average hitter despite having a .405 BABIP, and another low-level flyer seems like a no-brainer to me.

I don't disagree with your point about pitching, and I'm not going to go to the ramparts in order to keep Granite on the roster at all costs. If they claim a pitcher with some decent upside, or if they sign a veteran, I'm not going to throw a fuss if they waive Granite to make space. He isn't my personal #40 guy on the roster, but he is probably #37 or so. Anyway, at some level they made the right choice in waiving De Jong since he passed through unclaimed. Regardless, my point was more about providing explanation as to why his is still on the roster. I think there is upside there. Granite has a fairly obvious piece (hitting for any kind of power) missing from his current skill set that's preventing him from being a decent big league player. But, fortunately for him, it is a skill that players pick up (especially in their late 20s) all the time. (Contrast that with Tyler Austin, where the conversation is that he needs to cut his K% by 20%. How many players - at 27yo - make drastic cuts to their strikeout rate?) And if it is obvious to me, it should be obvious to the Twins development staff. Hopefully, they sat down with him at the end of the season and basically said, "Look Zack, your current game won't work in the big leagues. You need to change your swing and approach to generate more power, and we will help you figure this out." And hopefully that is what he has been working on all offseason, and will continue through spring training. And if it doesn't happen, he is gone next November. Or sooner if they need the roster space. But the path, though unlikely, is there.

Sure, that's exactly what I mean. Guys like Denard Span (12 HR in 2400 minor league PAs) and Brett Gardner (9HR in 1700 minor league PAs) are examples of the path I'm thinking. If he can up his ISO to, say, .110 from his current .075, he could be an everyday player. It probably won't happen, but I think it is worth the opportunity cost of having him on the 40-man roster for the next 9-14 months.

Not a huge fan of Thorpe after seeing him live in the Future's Game last year. Relative to the other top prospects in that game, he was hit hard, struggled to miss bats, and just didn't have the stuff displayed by other pitchers. He topped out at 94, and was mostly 91-93, which for a single inning stint wasn't very impressive - most other pitchers in the game sat 95+. And just seeing him pitch, his physique (shortish and stockish), handedness, mechanics, and relative stuff immediately made me think of Brian Duensing.

Probably because it isn't uncommon for a power spike to occur in a player's late 20s. And that is basically all Granite needs to be a productive big leaguer.

Unfortunately, walk rate in the low minors has extremely low predictive value for future performance. Chris Mitchell (who had a stat-based prospect ranking system at Fangraphs and was eventually hired by a front office) ignored walk rate almost completely until AA. And for reference, Buxton and Sano both had BB% and K% rates in Cedar Rapids very similar Baddoo last year.

There is a lot of work that has been posted at Fangraphs and other websites about the expected value for both draft picks and prospect rankings. Draft picks: A model by Jeff Zimmerman predicts that the #5 overall pick on average produces ~6 WAR over the first 6 years of the players' careers. Looking at the 25 #5 picks prior to Gordon, only 11 achieved > 1 WAR for their career. Prospect Ranking: Gordon has primarily been in the 50-100 range of prospect list. That lines up pretty close with his draft capital. Research by Craig Edwards (and others) suggests that players in that range, on average, produce ~6 WAR over their first 7 years of team control. Further, ~50% bust (less than 1 WAR), and only 10% turn into stars (>3 WAR per year). Anyway, if we just look at what history would predict Gordon should produce at any point in his profession career (based on his draft position and prospect rankings), the expected value isn't that high. I think getting one or more average or better seasons from him would be a huge win in all honesty, and greatly exceed any hype he has had in the past.

I trust (as far as one can) the Castro projection, so I think that part is fine. I don't trust Steamer's projection of Garver - BP had him at 0.3 WARP last year vs 1.3 for Fangraphs, based on dismal framing numbers. So if Garver is actually closer to replacement level than an above-average like Steamer is suggesting, then having those backup PAs go Castro instead (who is better than Garver when including framing) is carryover improvement. Astudillo is a wildcard in this exercise... I'm not exactly sure how to model the PA difference. Castro is likely to bat 8th or 9th. Realmuto could bat as high as 2nd, and likely top 5. So even if they play the same number of games, Realmuto could get 50+ more PAs. But most of those extra PAs will come at the expense of other players in the lineup, so it isn't as simple as subtracting the difference between Castro and Realmuto's projections.

Yeah, I probably overstated with 3-4 WAR improvement. But it depends a lot on how one divvies up playing time (Castro is projected to be the worst, even though he gets most PAs) and if one factors in pitch framing (Garver is one of the worst in baseball; Realmuto is above-average). 2-3 WAR is probably more accurate.

That is probably true in the abstract, but I have a hard time seeing what pitcher is going to be available over the next 12 months. The top-20 projected pitchers for 2019 all play for the Red Sox, Mets, Nationals, Astros, Indians, Yankees, Phillies, Rays, Rockies, Pirates, Dodgers, Diamondbacks. Of that group, the only team that is remotely rebuilding right now is Diamondbacks, but I'm not sure that Greinke (age and contract) or Robby Ray (health, limited team control) are pitchers that would merit that kind of trade package. The Rockies might blow things up if this year goes poorly, but they are a weird organization that is hard to get a read on. Otherwise, every other team is making moves that indicate that they are expecting to compete in 2020. The other thing is that a determination made today about whether the team is competitive is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right now, Fangraphs is projecting the Twins to be a 83-win team in 2019, currently 7th in the AL. Guessing at the win distribution around that mean, it implies that there is something like a 50% chance that the Twins either hold or sell at the 2019 deadline, and maybe just a 20% chance that they are a strong buyers. It would kind of defeat the point if a pitcher like Thor did become available in July but the Twins aren't buying. And if they sell/hold and end up <=83 wins for the season, won't that be used to argue that they aren't true contenders and should sit out the 2020 offseason as well? But add 3-4 WAR from Realmuto (who is absolutely available today), and that vaults the Twins ahead of the Rays and Angels, cuts 40% of the Indian's advantage, and the Twins are most likely buyers at the deadline. And from that inflection point, it isn't hard to see them make a run at 90 wins. That may not be enough to win the division, but it certainly provides enough evidence that the team is a contender and can be built upon going into the 2020 season.

Would you agree that there would be ample examples of successful mid tier teams building through specifically high end FAs and trading for establish players? I feel like there is quite a bit of "No true Scotsman" going on in your arguments on this thread, so I'm not sure any kind of evidence will change your mind. But here are some examples that I think are pertinent. The Brewers were already brought up, but you said don't count because you can't understand how they won 96 games with such bad pitching. The Royals were brought up with the Shields trade, but you said they don't count because the Royals were better after Shields left (as if they would have been better without him while he was there?), ignoring that the whole point of the trade was to bridge the gap between their position players (who were in the big leagues) and their pitching prospects (who were a few years away). You just brought up the Diamondbacks, who signed Greinke. But you said that doesn't count because it was only one piece. The Reds had a nice little run at the beginning of the decade, and they spent a fair amount of prospect assets to acquire Rolen, Choo and Latos. But I'm sure the Reds don't count because they didn't sign any high end FAs. Or they weren't successful enough. Or they didn't "build through" these players. You can take your pick. The Blue Jays signed Russell Martin and traded for Josh Donaldson, and they had a few years where they were pretty successful. But maybe they weren't successful enough for your threshold. Or they don't qualify as a mid tier team. The Cardinals won a World Series in 2011 with Matt Holliday and Lance Berkman as their 2nd and 3rd best position players - both fairly high priced free agents. But I'm not sure if they cross your threshold of being "high end FAs", so maybe they don't count. And of course, the Cardinals punch above their market size when it comes to payroll, so their long stretch of competitiveness probably doesn't count - despite their trades (like for Ozuna and Goldschmidt) and signings (like Fowler). The Mariners just had a quasi-successful run (despite being run by some extremely mediocre GMs) in large part because of Cano and Cruz - both FAs. But they probably weren't good enough overall to count. And Seattle is probably too big of market. The Tigers traded for prime Miguel Cabrera, signed a bunch of high end FAs, traded for other established players. They were one of the best teams in baseball between 2011-2014, and had a nice 8 year run of competitive baseball. But they probably don't count because their owner allowed them to run high payrolls. The Indians signed Edwin Encarnacion, traded for Andrew Miller. But this is probably supplementing an existing core, rather than building through those moves. So they don't count. The Nationals have signed Werth, Scherzer and now Corbin. They made a big trade to get Adam Eaton. Does this example count? The Rangers nearly one back to back World Series at the beginning of this decade, and arguably their best player was Adrian Beltre, who they signed as a free agent. They also paid big bucks to get Darvish and Joe Nathan. While not a mid-tier team, the Astros have gone out and acquired one or more established veterans with multiple years of team control via the trade market every year since 2015: Gattis, McCann, Giles, Fiers, Verlander, Cole. So there are 10 examples from the past eight years who I think answer your question. But I'm sure you can lawyer your way out of accepting any of them as valid evidence, because your question is super subjection to what is or isn't "mid tier", "successful", "building through", "high end", "establish players". But only 14 or the bottom 20 teams in revenue have made the playoffs since 2011, and 9 of them show up on my list.

It took me a couple readings to figure out what Nick is talking about (I think the headline is a little misleading...). Anyway, I think the article would have benefited by laying out a hypothetical state of the Twins rotation on March 15th, something like the following scenario: "Gibson's already-once-repaired UCL blows out again. He is out for the season. Romero's shoulder has been a little sore, so he was shut down early in Spring Training for rest and there is no way for him to build up innings until mid-May at the earliest. The coaching staff is concerned about Pineda's durability coming off basically an entire season off, and really want him in the 5 slot of the rotation so they can regularly skip starts during the first part of the season." So then, the question is "Does it make sense for the Twins to have a veteran pitcher on a minor league deal in camp?" Personally, I have almost zero faith that Stewart or Gonsalves will be effective big league pitchers, and so I would welcome any additional competition at that tier. Basically: Pitchers I'm comfortable having in the rotation: Berrios Gibson Odorizzi Pineda Meija Romero Pitchers that I don't want to have to rely on in any context on Opening Day: Gonsalves Stewart Littell De Jong If two or more of the first group are out for whatever reason (injury, performance), then having an additional, veteran arm (or two) in camp on a minor league deal makes sense. More options; higher probability at least one will break out/bounce back.

I just don't see what underlying elements of his performance we should be hanging our hats on in such a small sample. For the assertion that Gonsalves doesn't get hit hard, it is certainly true that he was able to limit hits, BABIP, and such in the minors. But all of the Statcast data seems to indicate that he got hit just as hard or harder than the average big league pitcher. The fact that he only allowed 2 HRs (which makes his final HR numbers, like HR/9, HR/FB%, etc, look good) instead of 3 HRs (which would put everything at roughly league-average) is hardly a difference that anyone should put a lot of faith into for his future performance. A big part of why he was able to do limit hard contact in the minors is because he was able to induce an obscene number of popups. (Seriously, his AVERAGE popup rate in the minors would be TWICE the rate of the MLB leader last year, deGrom.) His success at the end of the season wasn't because he got back to inducing popups (he didn't induce a single popup in his last three games); rather, he inverted his script and induced a ton of ground balls. Now, that would have been an interested topic for an article: "Did Gonsalves become a ground ball pitcher?" But for now, his margin for success in the majors is razor thin, and until I see evidence that he can actually miss bats or avoid walks, I'm not buying Gonsalves.

And even when the opposing players made contact, they had a .129 BABIP. Now, pitchers can control the quality of contact a little bit. That that is just ridiculous good luck.

I'm pretty sure Romero has 6 years of team control remaining.

That doesn't really explain why Rosario's OPS was .659 in April, or .683 in July before Escobar was traded. Rosario had two amazing months (May & June) surrounded by four months with sub-.670 OPS.

A few points on this: 1 - it is a relatively small sample of domination (~100 batters) 2 - 56% of the batters he faced were from KC, Det and Chi 3 - Relievers are pretty volatile year-over-year. 4 - The early projections aren't buying a breakout.

For me, it isn't just that other teams passed on him on waivers; rather, it is that the Rays had to put him on waivers to begin with to get him off their roster. That implies that literally no team was willing to trade anything of value for him and the Rays were left to dump him for nothing.

I'm not exactly sure why the shrug, as that is another data point that his HR rate in 2018 was a potential outlier. And I don't think you appreciate the relationship between HR/FB and FB%. If his HR/FB rate moves up to his career average (from 8.9% to 10.3%) in 2019, then he would need to drop his FB% to his career low (from 48.8% to 40.6%) in order to maintain the same number of overall home runs. If his HR/FB rate moves to league average (which he did exceed in 2016-2017), then he would basically need to become a GB pitcher to suppress HRs like he did in 2018. The bottom line for me is that there is enough evidence that Odorizzi should have given up 4-6 more HRs last year than he actually did, and there is plenty of research to suggest that the lack of HRs is, more likely than not, a product of the randomness of HRs rather than any particular skill that Odorizzi now possesses. So I'm making my predictions about Odorizzi's future effectiveness based on it being just randomness. Therefore, I feel completely comfortable saying that Odorizzi had a nice 2018 that wasn't exactly backed up by his underlying peripherals, and going forward I expect him to be worse, not better, than 2018. And if he is going to be worse than he was in 2018, I have no interest in a long term extension.

I think there are way too many warning signs with Odorizzi to consider signing him in long term. Mostly, his success this season (particularly after June 1st) was almost entirely about the fact that he, for whatever reason, gave up home runs on fly balls well below average for his career and relative to the rest of the league. His full season HR/FB rate (8.9%) was 6th best among qualified starters, and his post-June-1st rate was 4.6%, which would have led the league by a significant amount. This is why his xFIP for the season was 4.80, why Steamer is projecting a 4.90 ERA next year, and why BP's DRA stat suggests he was actually below replacement level last year. It is rare for pitchers to have a lot of control, year-to-year, over how many of their fly balls go over the fence, and I have a hard time believing that Odorizzi just stumbled into a skill where he is now the best in baseball a suppressing home runs.

This kind of analysis really helps illuminate my thoughts about this current team. They are in a position that they will likely miss the playoffs EVEN IF Buxton and Sano both break out next year. The top playoff teams in the AL in 2018 all had 50+ WAR. Even if Buxton and Sano combine for 10+ WAR next season, they are still going to be 7-10 WAR short of the competition.

There is certainly a non-zero risk that Gibson could get injured between now and July. That needs to be factored in. Gibson could be a completely worthless asset in 6 months.

I think you are seriously discounting 2017. They were maybe a little out over their skis, but they had a positive run differential for the season and were actually a net-negative in one-run games. And they had like 35 fWAR as a team, which was more or less in line with their record. It's not like the Mariners this past season who were WAY, WAY, WAY over their underlying indicators. And the offseason following that season is what bugs me more than anything else about this front office. They had the youngest group of position players in the AL, and many of the young guys appeared to be breaking out. Most other franchises - even small market teams - have aggressively tried to upgrade the top of their roster when on the cusp of competitive window by acquiring long-term, high-talent assets. The Brewers were in basically the exact same position as the Twins, and they went out and acquired Yelich via trade and Cain via FA. The Pirates just traded a bunch of talent for Chris Archer. The Phillies are trying to jump start their contention window, and they just traded for Segura. The Padres signed Hosmer and are seemingly involved in every big trade rumor going right now. Basically every single season since they started winning, the Astros have used their prospect depth to acquire more players for the top of their roster. And going back a few years, the Royals traded Wil Myers for James Shields and Wade Davis. Speaking for myself, I think there is an abundance of evidence that this front office hasn't believed in the Buxton/Sano/Kepler/Rosario/Polanco/Berrios core from day one, and that their long-term strategy (if there is one) is to tread water until THEIR prospects show up.

I dislike this move for three reasons: First, I don't like the fact that the Brewer's - a front office that has nailed way more transactions than the Twins in the past two years - had an opportunity to tender him a contract (with a need at the position) and basically said, "thanks, but no thanks." Second, this move (combined with the Cron signing and all the moves last offseason) just give the impression that the front office thinks the core of this team is fine, and all they need to do is backfill on the margins. And I just disagree with that so strongly. This core is good and has upside, but it needs to complemented with more players that are stars, or at least solidly above-average. Last season, the gap in talent between the Twins and the top teams in the league was roughly 20-25 WAR. Even in you pencil in huge rebounds from Sano and Buxton, this team still has a big talent gap. In fact, the gap is large enough that it will probably be a multi-year project to close that gap. Which is why it is all the more important to be making moves that will pay off in 2020 and 2021 as well as this coming year. Schoop and Cron, while fine in a vacuum, at best replace Escobar's and Mauer's production from last year. And neither move really helps next season. This team is just spinning its wheels. Third, since I feel like this is just a move to maintain the status quo, I don't see the need to be a first-mover in the 2B market when there are like 8 roughly league-average options available in free agency. They are really betting on Schoop for some reason.

Santana can still play 1B well. He is not a liability out there.