markos

Is there compelling evidence that he is exactly the same player as he was in 2012? Maybe he isn't quite as quick as he used to be. His SBs have dropped from 49 int 2012 to 16 in 2014.

I think Stuart had a better year hitting than his final stat line indicates. He had a terrible April (.452 OPS), and spent the rest of the year digging himself out of that hole. However, from May 1st on, he had a .759 OPS, which is solidly above-average in the Florida State League. He obviously won't be a Joe Mauer or Buster Posey at the plate, but I think the Drew Butera comparisons are premature.

I think the best place to start is to look at the spray charts on Fangraphs. It displays the position of all the plays both made and missed. By comparing two players side-by-side, it is easy to get a quick sense of their relative ranges and abilities. It's not perfect, but perhaps the best place to start. Here is an example comparing 'Made Plays' by Torii Hunter and Jason Heyward: http://www.fangraphs.com/spraycharts.aspx?playerid=731&position=OF&type=fielding&pid2=4940&ss1=2014&se1=2014&ss2=2014&se2=2014&cht1=fielding_made&cht2=fielding_made&pos1=ALL&pos2=ALL The more sophisticated statistics (like UZR or DRS) are hard to analyze since the specifics and data are all proprietary, and outsiders like us only get the final calculation. But here are some good explanations for their methodologies: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-fangraphs-uzr-primer/ http://www.fangraphs.com/library/defense/drs/ Attempting to measure defensive ability and quantify its value is among the most (if not THE most) controversial topics in sabermetrics. You will find widely varying degrees faith in the metrics, both on this site and across the broader baseball community. That's why I think you should start with looking at spray charts. It isn't controversial to state that Heyward's dots cover a lot more area than Hunter's. It starts to get really hairy once someone tries to justify putting a value (5 runs! No, 15 runs! No, 40 runs!) on that difference.

Nice! I really hope his 2014 was for real, at which point this deal will be a complete steal for the Twins. Even if he regresses, it should still be good. I'm shocked that Hughes signed such a reasonable extension. He signed for less AAV than Nolasco or Santana. He is young enough that if he had just played out the next two seasons (and pitched decent and stayed healthy) he would probably be in line for something closer to Anibal Sanchez money, if not Lester money if he had two more seasons like 2014.

A lot will depend on if the teams wants him as a starter or as a reliever. If they want to keep him as a starter, my guess is that Meyer starts the year in AAA regardless of how good he looks in spring training. My reasoning is that he was on a fairly short leash last year both in terms of innings and pitch count, and that the Twins will want him to prove that he can handle 6+ innings and 100+ pitches per start for significant period of time (say 6+ starts) before promoting him. However, it definitely seems like they are really trying to win this year, and with most of the rotation already filled, they may move him to the bullpen and have him start the season with the Twins.

He just might not be the player everyone thought he was in the minors. There was a very good article by Dave Cameron about Myers this week: http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/wil-myers-flaws-trade-rays-royals-padres-121714 To sum up, he basically argues that Myers doesn't make enough contact or hit for enough power to be productive enough to man a corner position. If he can improve one skill or the other, he will be okay. But this same combination of skills (low contact, medium power) is basically what doomed former top prospects like Justin Smoak and Dominic Brown. Interesting quote at the end: Also, I really like this deal for the Nationals. They already have one of the best teams in baseball, but they have done a great job of reloading their farm system.

I am surprised that Nick has Vargas penciled in as the cleanup hitter. My personal thought is that Plouffe and Arcia will both out-hit Vargas next season. Plouffe batting 7th seems way too low for me. I'm not very bullish on Vargas right now. He had a good few weeks, but then struggled to end the season. Despite having several holes in his game, lots of people (front office included) seem to have his name carved in for the DH/clean-up position for 2015. He definitely has the potential to be a solid contributor, but right now his seems like the most likely player to struggle to start the season and get sent down to AAA for more work.

My guess is that they looked at Pino's high flyball rate and decided he might be serviceable in front of their outfield defense.

As a counterpoint, name one contending team that would be excited about the prospect of having to depend on Nolasco, Gibson, Milone or Pelfrey to hold down one spot in the rotation (much less three spots!), with the playoffs riding on it. Given a choice between those six pitchers, I'm sure some contenders would pick Meyer or May.

I wonder if the Twins will end up regreting hanging onto Duensing for another season over protecting Gilmartin.

My nominee is Stuart Turner. He had a terrible April (.452 OPS) which depressed his stats for the entire season. But from May 1st until the end of the year, he had a OPS of .759, which would amount to a 109 OPS+. Not bad for a catcher in the Florida State League. His season kind of reminds me of Dozier's in 2010, when Dozier quietly had a solidly above-average season in the depressed run environment that is the FSL and nobody noticed. I wouldn't be surprised if Turner is promoted to AA and his bat picks up. If that happens, he is knocking on the door to the majors, especially if his defense is a good as everyone claims.

Lots of people are down on Cameron right now after a so-so summer. ESPN, Fangraphs and now MLB Pipeline all have ranked him at #8 or worse in the past couple of months. However, he is still my expected pick for the Twins at #6. Toolsy outfielder with bloodlines is right up their alley.

I don't think 100 runs is unreasonable at all. First, that comment was comparing the entirety of the Twins outfield against the Royals - it wasn't comparing individual players. Second, the value adds up very quickly in the outfield as unmade plays are often doubles and triples. Using the linear weights for various outcomes, difference between an out and a single is roughly 0.75 runs, a double is 1 run, and a triple is 1.25 runs. So a rough, back-of-the-envelop calculation would suggest the difference between the Royals and Twins was basically 1 play a game. That may still seem a little crazy, but breaking it down further, I don't think it is unreasonable at all to think that once every three games Alex Gordon would make a play that Willingham/etc would miss, Cain/Dyson would make a play that Hicks/Santana would miss, and Aoki/Cain would make a play that Arcia/etc would miss. That is all it would take to add up to a 100 run difference. The advanced defensive metrics assign value in a much more sophisticated manner than my rough calculations here, but I think the numbers they have come up with are not impossible or even unreasonable. The Royals were really, really good, and the Twins were really really bad. Even if that difference is just a couple of plays per week at each outfield position, that will add up to a lot of runs very quickly.

Before the Donaldson trade, I had hoped Plouffe would fetch one league-average-ish player and one decent prospect. Now I'm not sure that is possible.

Here is the case against Donaldson being elite (or projecting to be elite in 2015): 1) His hitting dropped by 20 runs between 2013-2014, which included a steep drop in his line-drive rate. Will this drop continue? 2) He is a great defender, but that is often the first skill to deteriorate. 3) There are a ton of good-to-great players at 3B right now, which makes him less valuable relative to the rest of the league. When a 3 WAR player barely gets you to league average for the position, it skews the relative advantage. Basically, if his offense and defense both slip just a little bit, he is essentially Todd Frazier, and I don't think anyone would be shocked by this trade if it involved the Reds and Frazier instead of the A's and Donaldson.

Thanks for the long and thorough response. Your explanation does make a lot of sense - I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the logic, but I can definitely see how teams would value the time to mold a prospect to their liking. My own personal opinion is that young, low-level prospects like Barrerto have enough risk to cancel out the benefit of having the time to development them in your system. It requires a lot of faith in your own scouts and player development personnel to correctly identify the player's upside and actually reach his potential. I would rather have an older, closer-to-the-majors prospect with some warts rather than a young prospect that hasn't had a chance to fail yet. As I've been trying to make sense of the Donaldson trade, I've been thinking a lot about two potential factors that may help the trade make more sense. First, it is possible that Donaldson's isn't the elite player that I (or the advanced stats) make him out to be (or, more importantly, that he doesn't project to be an elite player going forward). I've been thinking about about potential biases in the accounting that may make stats like WAR overrate him. Second, it is possible that I am underrating the return the A's received. This line of thinking touches on what you explained, as it made me rethink the David Price trade. One of the pieces in that deal was a player very similar to Barrerto: Willy Adames. It certainly seems probably that I'm underrating that kind of player.

Can you please explain this distinction further? I'm having a hard time understanding why there would be a huge difference between trade valuation and prospect rankings. Also, I'd like to know who the 5-10 prospects are in the first tier. I don't really know anything about prospects, but I think that if my team had Barreto, there are at least 5 shortstops I would rather have. Just off the top of my head: Addison Russell Francisco Lindor Carlos Correa Cory Seager JP Crawford I'm sure there are other shortstops that I'm not even aware of that could be added to this list.

I also agree. Lots of arms that seemed worth adding.

The Twins have numerous holes in their roster, so if they are willing to commit $90MM over the next 4 years, they could find lots ways to spend that money in the free agent market that would have roughly the equivalent impact as adding Hamels. Just take the money, spend it in the free agent market, and keep the prospects. For example, I can't imagine that over the next 4 years Cole Hamels - (Dozier, Vargas, May, Thorpe) > James Shields. The Twins are not in a position to be sacrificing future talent for present wins, because the present doesn't look great, and the future is much brighter. I would rather have them hold on to the prospects and make a trade for next year's version of Hamels. Unless a team is in a position where they have a very specific need that can only be met in the trade market, it doesn't make a lot of sense to trade a lot of talent for a player that is being paid at or near the market rate (though on the other hand, trades allow a team to get around the pesky problem of actually convincing the player to sign with them).

I've actually wasted way too much time musing about potential Plouffe trades to SF. SF has two centerfielders (Angel Pagan and Gregor Blanco) and a slew of B-level pitching prospects. My framework for a deal would be Plouffe for Blanco and Kyle Crick. I'm pretty sure SF says no to this deal, but that is my starting point from the Twins perspective. Basically it is a replay of the Revere trade, as the Twins would receive a (hopefully) league-average regular at a position of need and a flawed pitching prospect with some upside. However, in some ways I think this may be underselling Plouffe, particularly if 2014 wasn't his peak.

I think adding outside voices - particularly people who are currently coaching on major league staffs - is very important, and I think the Twins missed a great opportunity to improve the organization. In particular, I don't think the this collection of coaches will challenge the front office and make it better. In my perfect world, they would have hired someone completely outside the organization - hypothetical example, Ray's bench coach Dave Martinez. That kind of hire could potentially spur change and growth throughout the organization. As examples, any or all of the following things could happen: 1) To the stat guys, he could request the specific stats or analytics that he used and found useful. 2) To the scouting guys, he could ask for scouting report information that they found useful. 3) To the trainers, he could recommend training programs, or maybe even good training staff to poach. 4) To Terry Ryan, he may provide the recommendations (and familiarity) necessary to poach good scouts, analysts, etc from the other team's front office. Allen and Glynn may provide a small potential for growth, but they have two limitations for effecting change: first, their suggestions/requests will not have the weight as coming from the manager; second, they were AAA coaches, not MLB, and quite possibly were only privy to a subset of what the other organizations were doing a the big league level. Overall, I think Molitor and the staff he has collected is a definite step in the right direction, and I am fairly confident it will be better than the status quo. However, I think it could have been a lot better, which is why I'm still disappointed.

In an effort to nudge this conversation in a slightly different direction, I'm going to ask a question to the WAR-skeptics out there: What evidence do you require to confirm that any current (or future) WAR methodology is accurate and correct, insofar that it correctly calculates each player's contribution to a team's success, and that these contributions are context-neutral, which allows players to be directly compared across positions, teams and leagues? Similarly, is there a threshold where a methodology becomes accurate enough to be useful for day-to-day player comparison, even if there is still noise/error in the system?

I think you are missing a step in the WAR calculation that may help explain the positional adjustment. I would characterize WAR this way: "WAR purports to identify the worth of a given set of offensive outcomes, finds the difference between that value and league average production, adjusts that difference to replacement level, and then translates the adjusted difference into wins." WAR doesn't directly care about the raw number of runs that a player created during the season. Everything is adjusted to be relative to the context of the league. That allows comparisons to be made between players in different era or run environments. This is why the positional adjustments make sense. Like you said, every team has one of each in the lineup. Last year, the league average OPS was .700, and let's say my team had a 1B and a SS who both had .700 OPS. Last year, 22 other teams had above-average production from 1B, which means that my 1B was actively hurting my team relative to the rest of the league. However, only 6 other teams had above-average SS, which means that my SS was helping my team win relative to the rest of the league. So even though both my 1B and SS produced the same number of runs from their offensive performance, relative to the rest of the league the 1B was hurting my team, while the SS was helping. That is why I think it makes sense for the SS to get a position adjustment, while 1B gets a negative adjustment. I do think there are many (potential) issues with the current implementation of positional adjustments, but overall I think the concept is correct.

I don't necessarily think that the "absurdly high" outliers of dWAR should be dismissed so quickly. A 3.9 dWAR may seem like a lot, but I don't think it is impossible. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation: 3.9 WAR is roughly 35 runs in the 2014 run environment. Using linear weights (the same methods used to calculate offensive WAR that most people are comfortable with), the value of a single versus a ground-out is approximately 0.7 runs (it varies based on run environments and other factors, but that is in the ballpark). So roughly speaking, during 2014 Simmons needed to convert 50 plays that a replacement level shortstop wouldn't make. Over the course of 150 games, that is one every three games - essentially twice a week. I don't think that kind of performance is unreasonable at all, especially for the best of the best defenders. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your argument, but it seems like limiting dWAR to a realistic level of 1.0 or so and ignoring outliers is equally absurd. That is essentially arguing that the difference between the best and the worst defenders is just 12 plays a season.

There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about this trade from Atlanta's perspective, as Ben has laid out. However, there is a significant amount of risk. Miller's turnaround was definitely buoyed by a .214 BABIP in the second half. His FIP was still above 4.00 during that time. He does have good pedigree and is young, but Dave Cameron made the comp to Jeremy Hellickson as another pitcher whose performance never quite reached his lofty prospect status. Regarding Jenkins, both Keith Law and Kylie McDaniel gave glowing reports from his performance in the Arizona Fall League. However, Jenkins sure gave up a lot of home runs last season if he is an elite groundball pitcher. As a comparison, he was in the same league as Jose Berrios last year (and 2 years older), yet he gave up homers at twice the rate, even though Berrios is considered a flyball-prone pitcher. Overall, he had a 4+ FIP for the season. And he has yet to pitch more than 100 innings or make more than 20 starts in a season due to injuries. Sounds like he has good stuff and seems to be trending in the right direction, but there is a fair amount of risk involved. If I was a Braves fan, I would be a little disappointed that they couldn't get more for Heyward, but I would definitely be excited about the potential upside.