markos

Yes. Like Jose Fernandez good. Also, I wouldn't be shocked if the player he replaces in June is Rosario.

One other point to add about Jay's role last year at Illinois: when their season was on the line against Vanderbilt in the super-regional, he started that game. They knew he was their best pitcher.

I don't think Dunn is as bad of an example as you claim. Most of his terrible fielding numbers occurred in the back half of his 20s. Your query cut out a couple of his better seasons (2001 & 2003) and the Rfield value includes both his outfield defense AND his 1B defense (a position at which he was significantly worse on a per/game basis). Focusing just on his outfield defense, it was mostly competent up through age 25: Age | OF Games | OF Runs 21 | 63 | +1 22 | 118 | +1 23 | 102 | -1 24 | 156 | -4 25 | 133 | -10 26 | 156 | -17 27 | 144 | -26 28 | 141 | -19 29 | 84 | -20 Carlos Lee had a similar trajectory, though he didn't fall off until he got closer to 30. Given Sano's relative youth, and how other big players performed at a similar age, I'm cautiously optimistic that Sano will be competent in the outfield for the next year or two, at which point there should be openings for him in the infield.

Context is important when looking at his home run rate. Yes, fewer homers is better, but the Florida State League is brutal on power in general, and Fort Myers is in particular. The entire Miracle team gave up only 35 and hit only 27 in 139 games. The 'average' Miracle pitcher would have given up 4 homers when pitching the same amount of innings as Stewart.

Was anyone else surprised that he tied the Nishioka deal to the Santana trade rather than the Garza/Bartlett trade? I certainly seems like that deal was much relative to future issues with the shortstop position. Also, I always find it strange so many people, especially prominent media voices like Souhan, are so willing to malign the Smth front office and praise the Ryan front office even though they are basically the exact same group of people. I would really like someone to investigate those four years and figure out what the heck happened. Did Smith not listen to anyone and just do his own thing? Is Ryan just much better at sifting out the bad ideas from the rest of the staff? My personal thought (with no hard evidence, just a theory) is that Ryan was much better at tempering Gardenhire's influence in the front office decisions. This is mostly based on the short period when Ryan was out for medical reasons back in 2014 and there were a few really bizarre roster moves made that spring (like keeping Bartlett as the 25th man on the roster). Anyway, I often wonder what a guy like Mike Radcliff thinks whenever someone trashes the Smith years. I wonder if he is thinks, "Yeah, that guy wouldn't listen to me. Sure glad Terry's back." or, "Yeah, I wish he hadn't listened to me so often. Sure glad he's quietly taking the blame."

Worse than Stewart - few Ks, lots of BBs but also lots of HRs.

I feel like the narrative with Stewart's rawness has changed a lot since the draft. Pre-draft, his lack of focus on baseball was seen as a good thing, with the logic being that since he was already so good as a multi-sport athlete just think how good he will be once he focuses solely on pitching. BA actually picked him as the first HS player to reach the majors from his class. There was a HS pitcher in that class that everyone agreed was super raw but worth the development effort, and that was Trey Ball, the other top-10 HS pitcher selected that year. Everyone said that Ball was a major project that would take a long, long time to develop. Few, if any, draft analysts made similar warnings about Stewart. But as his results haven't matched the expectations, there has been a steady, growing drumbeat that Stewart was super-raw, needs lots of time, etc, etc.

These are valid quibbles, especially the first one. I totally agree that it wasn't completely fair to just claim that free agent X would have signed here for the exact same amount as they ended up signing for somewhere else. I just didn't have a good handle on what the proper adjustment should be, though your "add 10% and an extra year" is a solid suggestion, and if I had saved my spreadsheet from yesterday I would try to rerun the scenario with that factored in. However, another factor that prevent me from making any adjustments is that the numbers just worked really well given the parameters I was working under, and frankly I was too lazy to go into the weeds and start making secondary moves like "In order to keep the Sanchez signing under budget, they couldn't sign Correia or Pelfrey" in order to keep everything under budget. But without going through the work (again, I'm lazy), my gut feeling is that there is enough slack with the Correia/Pelfrey/etc signings that a bump up in free agent prices is still manageable. To your second quibble, I wouldn't say it was "perfect" hindsight. To pull back the curtain a little bit, I was intrigued by the challenge put out, and I decided to start out with a framework built around 5 moves that I wanted at the time: keeping Hardy, signing Sanchez and Martin, not signing Santana and not extending Hughes. Those 5 were my starting point, and I was definitely surprised by how much payroll was still available (from the $125M limit), especially if I dumped Nolasco. Then I looked through the 2012-2014 teams to identify major weaknesses, and decided that I really needed another starter and a corner outfield/DH bat. From there it was pretty easy to cherry-pick the Beurhle and Hunter contracts. So yes, there was definitely some benefit from hindsight, but a good chunk of these moves were picked "in real time".

That is an interesting answer, and way more optimistic than I would have been back then. Do you think that is the norm? Like that a team should only be bad for basically 4 years before being good again, or something went wrong? I think if I was put in that position at the end of the 2012 season and asked to tear down and rebuild, I would have promised 2016 as the earliest, but maybe 2017. Basically 2 seasons to tear-down and acquire talent, and then a year or two for that new talent to take its lumps in the majors. And Dozier, Plouffe and Perkins would all have been traded away.

I think there is a decent argument that if you are going to have money tied to diminishing players, the best time is as the competitive window is opening up. The Twins maximum payroll flexibility should be the next three years, where the production-to-dollars ratio for Sano, Buxton, Berrios, Duffey, Rosario, Kepler, et al is a its absolute highest. Maybe Sanchez was a little too early for this window, but I'd definitely argue that going after Russell Martin a year ago certainly would not have been. And as my little exercise (surprisingly, at least to me) showed, the payroll situation right now between my moves and the status quo is practically zero. It is just as easy to clog payroll with multiple small moves as it is with a handful a big moves, and the small moves have the added downside of clogging the roster as well.

Wiping the board clean has its own risks and challenges. I definitely go back and forth with the different strategies. It is easy to look at the Cubs, Astros and Rays and think that a tear down and rebuild only takes 2-3 years, but the Pirates had 5 losing seasons under Neil Huntington before they had a season above .500, and the Royals had 6 under Dayton Moore. If you were the GM of the Twins after the 2012 season and you are committed to wiping the board clean, what is your target seasons to get back into contention? 2016 2017? Maybe even 2018? What do you do with the late emergence of Dozier, Plouffe and Perkins? If your target season to get back into contention is, let's say, 2017, do you hang on to them even though they will all be leaving their primes? I'm mostly just thinking outloud here, so don't think that I'm against rebuilding. I have, at times, definitely been a strong advocate of the total rebuild like you suggest, so don't hold it against me if I argue for rebuilding in a different thread at a later date. I just feel like the last year changed my perspective as a fan a little bit. Maybe it has been all the losing, but it was shockingly fun to actually care about the results of the team for the entire season. It has definitely made me reconsider the value of just muddling along as a .500 team. Though I'm sure that would get old after a while, too!

I'll bite. First, here are the baseline salary numbers I used, which I got from http://www.stevetheump.com/Payrolls.htm 2011: $112M 2012: $94M 2013: $75M 2014: $85M 2015: $108M 2016: $108M (via baseball-reference's estimate) Second, 2011 + Don't trade JJ Hardy. - Don't sign Nishioka This doesn't move the needle for the 2011 season, which was not salvageable due to all the injuries. But it will hopefully set up things going forward... Salary added: +$5M 2012 + sign JJ Hardy to a 3 year, $21M deal (same deal he signed with Baltimore) + sign Mark Beuhrle to a 5 year, $58M deal Fun fact: the 2012 Twins position players were pretty decent, and with Hardy they would definitely be a league-average group. Beuhrle doesn't solve the problem, but going into the season with Beuhrle, Liriano and Pavano as the top three is respectable, and replacing 30+ starts from PJ Walters, Cole Devries, Liam Hendricks, et al would certainly help the overall result. Given who they replaced on the roster, these two moves potentially add 8ish wins. So a 70-75 win team. Salary added: +$21.5M New total payroll: $115M 2013 + Sign Anibel Sanchez to a 5 year/$85M contract + Sign Torii Hunter to a 2 year/$26M contract - Don't trade Denard Span - Don't sign Mike Pelfrey Continuing with my theme that the offense wasn't the big problem, I would have kept Span. The one hole on the offense (both this year and going forward) is someone competent to play a OF/DH and actually hit okay. That is the motivation for signing Hunter. On the pitching side, I would have brought in Sanchez. This would have worked out really well, as Sanchez pitched like a borderline ace in 2013. Adding Sanchez and Beurhle probably combine to add 10 wins on their own (considering who they would have been replacing), and adding Span and Hunter (and Hardy) would have all been positives to the offense. All told, I don't think it is too crazy to think this version would have been 15ish wins better than the actual 2013 squad. That is an 81 win team on paper, which is a borderline contender. Salary added: +$50M New total payroll: $125M 2014 - Don't sign Nolasco - Don't extend Suzuki Still sign Hughes. With Hunter on board, there is much less need to run out Parmelee, Colabello, Morales and Kubel for hundreds of at bats. Again, I think there is a good argument that this team is roughly .500. Salary added: +$39M New total payroll: $124M 2015 + Sign Russell Martin to a 5 year/$82M contract (same structure: 7-15-20-20-20) - Don't extend Hughes - Don't sign Santana On paper, this is a better team. Would they have been able to replicate the magic of 2015 despite down years from Beurhle and Sanchez? I don't know. But before the season, I wouldn't be shocked if the team was expected to be above .500. But what is interesting is that by this point, the salary difference between my hypothetical scenario and the real-world scenario are not that different. Salary added: +$9M New total payroll: $117M 2016 Do nothing? Span and Beurhle are off the books, so at this point my scenario is in the exact same shape as the current payroll. And personally I prefer the combination of Sanchez/Martin over Nolasco/Santana/Suzuki. And the cavalry is arriving. Salary added: -$1M New total payroll: $107M My plan definitely didn't create any juggernauts, but I do think that it did a good job of keep the team competitive and possibly in the wild-card conversation during both 2013 and 2014 without causing any significant damage to the 2016 and beyond teams, all while staying within the $125M budget.

I agree that this is all dependent on the right situation, and from the outside we don't have a good handle on how frequently those situations show up. But as a pseudo-rebuttal, I would point out that: a) Tacking on $3-4M probably isn't going to net a huge increase in prospect value, but it might allow you to significantly increase upside potential. So instead of having to choose from a list of unexciting mid-20s AAA players, you could choose from rookie-ball teenagers with some upside. Overall expected value might not be very different, but much high potential payout. It isn't just improving the quality of the return, but also increasing the total number of prospects thrown in. Essentially this allows them to buy additional talent. c) Yes, owners may bump up spending a little bit to make some deadline moves, but many teams (Pit, KC, TB, Cle, et al) do have fairly firm limits. So the extra $3-4M that the Twins could cover would be the difference between those teams making, for example, three moves instead of just two at the deadline. It at least maximizes the teams in the conversation, and it allows the opposing GM to make the determination of what is more important to them in the moment: money or future prospects. Unfortunately, I believe Terry Ryan is on record of explicitly rejecting the possibility of paying players to play for other teams. Unless the Twins operate their finances different than I currently understand, the money they save during these trades provides ZERO benefit for future teams. Marginal improvements in quantity or quality, even at costs that in other circumstances would seem ridiculous, are better than nothing.

I have two complaints about their spending during the past few seasons. To the best of my knowledge, the Twins have neither: 1) Paid the salary (either in full or just part) of a veteran player that they were trading away to potentially get a better return. Maybe they could have gotten back two prospects for Span instead of just one if they had agreed to pay half his salary. Maybe they could have received a better return (or at least had more teams interested) for Willingham, Morneau or Liriano if they would have covered their salary for the rest of the season. 2) Taken on a bad contract from another team in an attempt to acquire young talent. Both the Braves and the Brewers have used this strategy to get some good young players. I also have smaller complaints about their apparent disinterest in going over their bonus pools in international signings and domestic drafts.

I would trust the stats less and the scouts more in this case if there were any pitchers with results similar to Stewart's that thrived in the majors. The only name I've seen mentioned as a comparison is Jameson Taillon, who "struggled" with a 18.8% K% (basically league average) at A+, but otherwise has been consistently in the low-20s. I don't think that is much of a comp considering that K% is leaps and bounds better than Stewart's 12.8% at the same level. I've done a little bit of research, and looking at the 1st round HS picks from the past 20 years, there isn't anyone who struggled to miss bats like Stewart has and yet still went on to success in the majors. Am I missing someone obvious? Or are we all hoping that Stewart is a once-in-a-generation exception?

I agree that this is probably the plan. But I also thing there is better than 50/50 chance that at least one of those five pitchers you mentioned gets injured in spring training (or early in April) and Duffey ends up in the rotation. I predict that Berrios with be in the rotation by May to replace someone who is ineffective/injured.

Maybe they did adjust right away. Split G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB SO SO/W BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip 1st PA in G as SP 10 90 83 2 13 2 0 1 6 26 4.33 .157 .213 .217 .430 .214 2nd PA in G as SP 10 85 74 8 19 7 1 2 9 14 1.56 .257 .337 .459 .797 .293 3rd PA in G as SP 9 62 57 6 21 3 1 1 5 11 2.20 .368 .419 .509 .928 .444 4th+ PA in G as SP 2 5 5 2 3 0 0 0 0 2 .600 .600 .600 1.200 1.000 http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=duffety01&year=2015&t=p&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=Share&utm_campaign=ShareTool#times Generated 2/8/2016.

I think the big question is how quickly MLB hitters will be able to adjust, and how Duffey response. Most hitters have only seen him for a single game. The two teams that did face him twice (CLE and DET) had their swinging-strike rate drop from 12.6% in the first game to 8.4% in the second. That might be nothing but small-sample noise, or it could be sign that hitters will adjust the more they see him.

I think Oswalt is definitely a step above Radke, but we can argue semantics all day. But I do know that if the Twins want to be playoff contenders over the next few seasons, having Gibson put in multiple Radke-esque seasons (210+ innings, 115-120 ERA+, 5+ WAR) would be a big step in the right direction.

I'm glad that the Twins are fixing his potential tipping; however, I am much more interested in how they plan on helping him regain his lost velocity.

It's never good to have to rely on the "there is no way they could be that bad again" hope when looking toward the next year, but in the Tiger's case that may be true. Their #4-#9+ starters last year were terrible - they averaged over 6+ ERA and ended up with -6 bWAR. They don't necessarily need "good Pelf" to see improvement. If Pelfrey can give them a 5.00 ERA over 150 innings next year, that would be a 15-20 run improvement over what they had last year out of the #5 spot.

The April-July team that traded away Price and Cespedes was .500 at the trade deadline. So I think it is more accurate to say that they more-or-less replaced the losses of a 81-win team that was tore down at the deadline.

I'm curious to know what specific things you are using to differentiate between Gonsalves and Stewart. You have a pretty large numeric gap between them (#4 vs #13), so I'm assuming there is a decent gap between them in your mind. In my own opinion, I think they are really close - they are both really young pitchers with lots of upside who struggled to miss bats in the FSL.

Off the top of my head... - First put on the 40-man roster last year, 2015. Used one option. - Will be out of options after the 2017 season. - Service time is a little tricky, but the absolute soonest he could be a free agent is after the 2021 season, and that assumes he is on the major league roster from day 1. If he spends a few more weeks in AAA this year, then it will be pushed back to 2022.

This is kind of mean, but that NL exec is an idiot. The NBA has had a draft lottery for a long time, yet NBA teams tank ALL THE TIME. A lottery doesn't "solve" anything. It might slightly tweak the benefits, but that's about it. Does anyone really think the Astros would have done anything differently if their was a lottery in place? Like nicksaviking said, the benefits of tanking go well beyond just slightly higher draft picks. It includes acquiring more young players for veterans, ability to take flyers on high-upside talents, financial flexibility (sign international free agents, pay international signing penalties, absorb bad contracts for other teams, etc), roster space for rule 5 picks, etc.