markos

I actually like that tradeoff. On a 5-year deal, the pitcher gets an early opt-out clause if he avoids TJ surgery during the first 4 years. Team gets a veteran minimum 6th year option if he does get TJ during the 5 years. Seems fairly reasonable to both sides.

To the best of my knowledge Meyer was not injured after that. He didn't miss any starts, and there were no announcements of any injury. He was shut down at the end of the year due to a shoulder injury, but that was in early September. However, I speculated that he might be injured (or experiencing some soreness) after those late April starts last year because he wasn't allowed (or able) to throw over 90 pitches in a game (and averaged less than 80) for the following two months. But that was just my own speculation.

As duly noted above, Meyer had a great start on Tuesday. His final line: 6 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 11 SO It was very nice to see Meyer get back on track. As for how this will impact his promotion schedule, I have to admit that I have basically given up guessing about when Meyer will be deemed "ready." I was probably not the only person who had a little deja vu after hearing about Meyer's most recent start. Last year (almost to the day - 4/23/2014) Meyer had an almost identical start: 6 2/3 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 11 SO This was the start that caused Wil Middlebrooks to ask how the Twins could possibly have 5 starters better than Meyer in the majors. And Meyer followed that up with another great start. However, as we all know, those back-to-back starts did not merit a callup to the big leagues, and shortly thereafter he start to scuffle again. Hopefully Meyer can avoid scuffling this time, and force his way into the major league rotation sooner rather than later.

I disagree with this, though I have a fairly broad definition of "ace potential". My list of college pitchers with "Ace potential" includes: Tate Funkhouser Matuella Fulmer Ponce Buehler This is my reasoning. Other than a small handful of elite amateur pitchers (Strasburg, Prior, Price), the vast majority of Aces are developed over time in the minors and majors. So for me, having "ace potential" is more about having the raw tools needed, and questions about command, execution, durability, etc can be answered in the minor (and major) leagues. Off the top of my head, I consider the following tools that form the basis of an potential Ace: * maintain good velocity (93+) into the late innings * swing-and-miss breaking ball * ability to limit platoon splits * decent control Beyond that, the ultimate ceiling of a pitcher depends a lot on how exactly those skills refine, and (just as importantly) how well the pitcher stays healthy. Will a pitcher's command take the necessary steps forward to allow his stuff to play up? Will he stay healthy and durable? Will a new changeup grip eliminate a weakness against lefties? Those kind of questions are very, very hard to project, and are often only answerable after years of development. That's why one ends up having draft classes where Chris Sale is the 7th pitcher drafted or Max Scherzer is the 8th. Certainly some pitchers have few questions than others. But I'm not certain that the difference between best bet (say a perfectly healthy Aiken) and a good bet (say Tate) is incredibly meaningful given the huge uncertainty. And I don't think it is meaningful enough to say that one pitcher has "Ace potential" while another doesn't. It seems entirely possible to me that six years from now everyone will be wondering how Cy Young award winning Cody Ponce ended up falling to the #15 pick. Sorry for the long-winded explanation.

I agree with this. Let's see how he is doing after a few months of The Grind and after he gets dinged up a little bit.

I'm not sure that I'm know enough to label this play as "very impressive." Lots of major-league shortstops have strong arms and quick releases. I can't really determine from the video whether or not Santana's velocity and release are significantly better (or worse) than his peers'. Is this a play that only 5 shortstops could make? Or 25? If it is the latter, then it isn't "very impressive" so much as routine, and a play that needs to be made to order for Santana to not lose value relative to his peers. Hopefully the Statcast data will help answer this question.

Yesterday Chris Crawford posted his top-75 draft list. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=26118 No real surprises that I could see. He has Rodgers, Tate, Swanson as his top three. He is a little lower on Funkhouser (#8) and Bregman (#10) than others, and a little higher on Nikorak (#6). Overall, I think all of the recent draft rankings can be summed up by: Rodgers is the consensus #1 Tate is consensus top-3 The three college SS and Happ are all top-10, ordered by personal preference. Funkhouser is 5-10 right now, but moving up. The high school arms (Allard, Nikorak) and outfielders (Plummer, Cameron, Tucker) all slot somewhere in the 5-15 range, ordered by personal preference The Vanderbilt starters (Buehler and Fulmer) are both top-15, with the one you like better in the top-10. The TJ guys (Aiken and Matuella) can slot wherever the heck you want. Other than Rodgers (and probably Tate), there is a decent chance that every other player could be available for the Twins at #6. Certainly makes things interesting.

Inbox question about the draft that was answered by Jim Callis: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/118681250/jim-callis-pipeline-inbox-is-there-a-consensus-top-three-in-the-2015-mlb-draft He still considers Brendan Rodgers the #1 prospect. Tate and Swanson round out top-3. Funkhouser, Bregman and (interestingly) Kyle Tucker are considered top-10 locks.

I am excited to see that he pitched 8 innings. It would be great if he could keep that up throughout the season. If strikeout rate is Stewart's #1 question mark going into this year, his endurance/durability was #2. It is nice to see him answering that question right out of the gate.

(Memories are a fickle thing, so I hope my thoughts haven't been too tarnished by the passage of time..) I was surprised that it was a one-for-one deal. I liked the acquisition of Meyer, but he is a very high-risk, potentially high-reward prospect, and I expected another player or two of the low-risk, low-ceiling variety to be thrown in. I have strong memory of reading Dave Cameron's analysis and being convinced it that the Nats got the better end of the deal. So immediately after the deal, I thought it was okay, but not a great deal. However, based on what I've learned over the past 2 years, I now think it was a poor decision. And I'm not talking about the subsequent results of this deal, but rather new information and research has changed my opinion on this deal. As examples: 1) A lot of research has been done to determine the expected value of prospect rankings. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-to-expect-from-baseball-americas-top-100-prospects/ http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1449&context=cmc_theses http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2013/6/3/4386214/how-well-does-the-baseball-america-prospect-top-100-estimate-the-top These all show that a prospect in the 60-80 range (where Meyer was at the time of the trade) has an expected value of ~5 WAR. Span, by most projection systems, was expected to contribute ~9 WAR over the last 3 years on his deal. 2) Pitchers are risky and volatile in general. And Meyer in particular was (and still is!) incredibly risky. I don't think I fully appreciated at the time just how much risk is involved with a pitcher of Meyer's profile: 22-year-old and never pitched above A+, existing command and control issues, and abnormally tall. 3) I don't have any specific research to back this up, but I have started to question the wisdom of stockpiling minor league pitching. Pitcher development is so flat-out unpredictable that the cost of acquiring those arms (in draft picks, trades, etc) far exceeds, in my opinion, the actual expected value of those arms. There have been a lot of pitchers in just the past year that have gone from (basically) scrap-heap to top-of-the-rotation: Kluber, Hughes, Richards, Keuchel, Roark, Arrieta, etc. It seems to me that it would be more cost-effective to invest in and provide opportunity to those kind of arms (who can be acquired cheaply and in bulk) rather than trade a high-value asset to acquire a single 'elite' prospect arm. So based on those reasons, I now feel fairly strongly that Ryan traded a relatively low-risk, high-expected-value short-term asset in Span for a very, very high-risk, medium-expected-value long-term asset in Meyer. And, for me, that was a bad decision.

Not every expert thought it was a good trade. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/nationals-steal-denard-span-from-twins/:

The bullpen (AAA or MLB)? Maybe it would help bring his mechanics together by pitching in shorter stints more frequently.

Does anyone know if Meyer was able to get the normal amount of work in this spring? I know that he missed a few days due to his Grandfather's death, and I seem to recall people mentioning that he was "behind" this spring (which was one of the reasons he was sent down from big league camp so early?). Maybe he just needs more time to get into the swing of things.

Law posted his updated top-50 draft prospects last week. http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/keith-law/insider/post?id=3843 Interesting name at #2: Not really any surprises other than that. He still has Kolby Allard top-5 despite his back injury. Right now, the top of this draft has some depth in college bats (Newman, Bregman, Swanson, Happ), but the Twins haven't invested a top pick in a college position player since Travis Lee back in 1996. Also, Funkhouser pitched well last weekend. With so many injuries to the top players, he's now a viable option at #6.

Personal Information: Name: Alex Meyer Birth date: January 3, 1990 Position: SP Height: 6'9" Weight: 220 Bats: Right Throws: Right High School: Greensburg, IN College: University of Kentucky Professional History: 2011: Meyer was drafted with the 23rd overall pick by the Washington Nationals in the 2011 Draft. Going into the draft he was rated #19 by Baseball America and #9 by Keith Law on ESPN. He signed too late after the 2011 draft to pitch professionally in the 2011 season. 2012: Meyer started his professional career as a 22-year-old in low-A Hagerstown in the Nationals farm system. He started 18 games there, and he showed the ability to miss bats while having decent control, averaging 9.7 SO/9 and 3.09 SO/BB. He was promoted to high-A Potomac for the final 7 games of the season, and continued his good performance: 10.7 SO/9 and 3.15 SO/BB. Overall, he pitched 129 innings between the two levels, with an ERA under 3.00 and a .211 batting average against. He was acquired by the Twins from the Nationals in exchange for Denard Span on November 29, 2012 2013: Meyer was assigned to AA New Britain to start the season. He pitched well during the first half of the season, and through June 1st he had thrown 61 innings over 11 games with a 3.69 ERA, 10.8 SO/9 and 2.7 SO/BB. It was at this point the Meyer was put on the disabled list for a sore shoulder. He was on the DL for over 2 months, and after three rehab starts in the Gulf Coast League, he was re-activated on August 24th. He was able to get two more starts with New Britain before season's end, throwing 9 innings of shutout ball with 11 strikeouts and just 2 walks. Meyer was selected for the Arizona Fall League and was able to get an additional 26 innings over 7 starts. He was one of the best pitchers in the league, as he finished with a 3.12 ERA and 28 strikeouts against just 7 walks. Overall, Meyer pitched 104.1 innings for the 2013 season. 2014: Meyer was assigned to AAA Rochester, and pitched the full season there. He logged 27 starts and 130.1 innings - both career highs for him - and maintained stellar strikeout rates throughout the season, 10.6 SO/9. However, he didn't demonstrate any better control, as his walk rate deteriorated to 4.4 BB/9. Due to pitch and inning limits (understandable based on his injury issues in 2013) as well as his own ineffectiveness, he only reached the 7th inning once and averaged less than 5 innings per start during the course of the season. Meyer succumbed to another shoulder issue at the end of the minor league season, and he was shut down rather than get a September call up with the big league team. 2015: Meyer has been assigned to AAA Rochester to start the season.

I don't have enough information to feel strongly answering these questions one way or another. However, I do feel strongly that these are answerable questions. The Twins should have enough information from the past few decades to know the success rate of their (and the rest of the league's) international signings, and from that they should be able to model the potential gain of these different scenarios. A similar exercise could be done with the draft, and there is enough public information for us to come up with decent answers. For example, you could ask the question "would you prefer that the Twins had the #1 pick in the draft, or all 30 picks in the 10th round?", and looking at the historical evidence it is pretty clear that there is more value with the #1 pick. If the future success of international signings follows a similar distribution to the draft, then it may make the most sense to just sign one guy.

Alex Meyer

One thing to keep in mind with this deal is that it is only for 4 years, and it doesn't seem crazy to me that the Red Sox would agree to pay a slightly higher AAV ($20.6M in this case) in order to have a shorter deal - he obviously wasn't able to get a 6-year, $123M deal. I don't know what price the Red Sox would have agreed to for a 6-year deal, but I would assume it would be for significantly less than that. I think the Homer Bailey deal is a good comparison. They are both relatively young and roughly league-average pitchers. Bailey got more guaranteed money ($105M vs $80M), but it is spread over 6 years instead of 4. There is added risk to the team with the longer deal, so the Reds probably asked for a bit of a discount to go to 6 years. Even with a bit of a discount, the AAVs are still close ($17.5M vs $20.6M), especially considering the two extra years of salary inflation.

Jeremy, have you or Seth (or anyone else on TD) been tracking the Twins international signings for this past July 2 period? There was a thread a while back where we were guessing about how much of the international pool the Twins have spent this year. I made a SWAG that they have ~$500K leftover. Do you have any idea where the Twins are at?

This two-level jump has been fairly common for many of the recent HS pitchers that were top draft picks. Examples include: Madison Bumgarner Jarrod Parker Shelby Miller Jameson Taillon Archie Bradley Robert Stephenson Also, several pitchers ended up moving even faster (Jacob Turner, Jose Fernandez, Dylan Bundy). Provided Stewart stays healthy, I will be disappointed if he doesn't force his way to AA this year.

Curious to hear your take on the deal. My initial thoughts: huge win for Braves. Getting out of the Upton contract should be great for them, and really add a lot of flexibility going forward. Quentin and Maybin are as bad as Upton, but combined they are still making significantly less than Upton was over the next 3 years. Kimbrel is a big loss for the Braves, but considering where they are at in the rebuilding phase, he is probably expendable right now. And I'm not sure I would have expected him to fetch more than a Wisler, Paroubeck and #41 pick package on his own. All around great trade for the Braves.

You are correct that this isn't a perfect apples-to-apples comparison, as the 2014 number reported by BA is covers the end of the 2013 bonus pool as well as beginning of the 2014 bonus pool. However, the vast majority of spending occurs in the first few months after July 2nd, so the comparison should not be that far off. But it is possible that a late signing could swing things one way or the other. Also, I am "crediting the cheaters", though personally I would not label those teams at cheaters. They are not breaking any rules; they are following the rules. I just consider that paying the taxes and suffering the signing restrictions for going over their bonus pool are just part of the rules. MLB could have made the rule state that as soon as a team goes over they no longer have the rights to any more players, but they didn't. They just added some taxes and penalties to try to discourage teams from going over. For another data point, only 5 teams have a larger amount of unused bonus pool money than the Twins do right now. The only teams with more are Oakland, Baltimore, Miami, San Diego and the Cubs (who were on probation from going over their pool in the previous year).

Baseball America just release their data from the 2014 International Signing season. It doesn't not paint a pretty picture for the Twins. Though they had the 5th highest bonus pool, they were 10th regarding actual money spent. And if you sort the teams by percentage of pool used, they fall to 22nd, having only used 88% of their pool. That is roughly $450K unused. http://www.baseballamerica.com/international/2014-international-spending-team/ http://www.baseballamerica.com/international/2014-15-mlb-international-bonus-pools-and-slot-values/

Those lists do demonstrate that the Twins, though not the biggest player in the international market, are solidly in the top half of all teams. The 60 players listed were split among only 21 teams , and 8 teams signed only one. The Twins signed two, which by this flawed metric is top-half. And this is just a list of the high paid players, which may or may not perfectly reflect the teams' total investment for the season. There are a lot of clubs (and high-revenue clubs) that make little or no effort to sign players in the July 2 market, such as Bal, Was, NYM, Phi, Col, Cin, Mia and Cle. Even staying within the new spending rules, the Twins are still investing more money and signing more players than many (probably most) of their peers. They aren't the biggest spender out there, but I think they are solidly above-average.

I had forgotten about that. Hmm. Do I forgo my latest conspiracy theory in light of new contradictory evidence, or do I stick to my guns? Always a tough choice.