kab21

Intl FA's weren't included because they really aren't comparable to MLB FA's since they don't have any MLB experience. If you included them then Dice-BB would add to the massive failures category while Darvish is a fringe stud although it's too early to tell. Peavy and Marcum are the two best starters on the market after Greinke. The problem with them is their injury history. They could easily be the next Jason Schmidt who never threw a meaningful pitch for the Dodgers. IF they can be signed for a 3 yr deal and the long term risk is minimized I'm fine (and even like) the idea. Anibal sanchez is one of the next guys on the list for me since he's younger. I think he's underrated by many. At least he was until the playoffs. Edwin Jackson is solid and I would be fine if they signed him for 3/30.

I think it's awesome how this thread has become 'Lowe/Lackey/Burnett/Meche weren't that bad'. The problem is that this is the likely result if the Twins plunge into FA looking for starters. Let me press on something then. Since this thread is basically about complaining that the Twins won't spend big bucks on non-elite starters then how would you feel if the Twins plowed 100-150M into two starters whose absolute best case would be Dempster/Lilly and the more likely case would be Lowe/Burnett/Lackey/Meche/Suppan/Zito/Suppan/Schmidt/Silva? My valuations. I will use ERA since that is a measure of what actually happened. the pitcher actually gave up that bases clearing double. he actually walked the bases loaded before giving up a HR. I'll give Burnett and lackey +5M for having to pitch in the AL East. ERA's 3.50 - 15M 4 - 10M 4.50 - 5M 5 - 0M - if you can't throw a 5.00 ERA then you shouldn't be in the rotation and you are hurting your team 5.50 - -5M 6 - -10M Meche - 20M on a 55M contract - I'm not including his gift of early retirement since injuries happen all the time but almost nobody has given their team a free pass Lowe - 14M on a 60M contract Burnett - Yankees get 15M in value plus 13M from Pirates on a 82M contract Lackey - -5M in value but it can still work out because they 34 yr old coming off of TJ surgery for 3 more seasons.

I'm going to continue to hope that the pitchers don't disappoint this year because it looks like there are several deserving targets.

I think your definition of good needs some tweaking. If the Twins paid big bucks for a pitcher and they were putting up 4+ ERA seasons with a couple of 5+ ERA seasons they would be regarded as a massive failure.

Greinke and Hamilton are the only impact players in FA this year. For the Twins to even consider going for it they would need to sign both and then trade a couple of Span, Revere, Arcia, or Hicks for more starting pitching (like Shields). I actually don't hate signing Greinke. Imo you either go for him or settle for whichever starters fall in the 3/30 range or under. There's a lot of mediocrity and it doesn't make sense to be the guy that spends big on #3 starters this offseason.

I think the big reasons that Hicks was falling in the lists after 2010 and 2011 was that he was showing below average power with a low BA and progressing slowly. 17 HR's during 3 A ball seasons is rather lackluster. This is not unusual for toolsy I'll be honest that he dropped on my lists (still kept him relatively high) and probably on everyones. I consider him a different prospect than what he was in 2008 (obviously). Then he was that high upside/high risk player that could have any outcome from AAAA 4th OF'er to superstar. Now his floor looks like it will be a below average regular while his upside is only an above average player that makes an AS game or two. If I was trying to project an optimistic slash line for him it would be something like this .260/.350/.410/.760. Sure he could hit .280 but I think he K's too much. Perhaps he is able to add some power and approach a .200 isoP but I would be surprised if he consistently had a .800+ OPS. However with plus D he can be pretty valuable with a .760 OPS.

I'll reorganize my FA starting pitcher summary to make it a little easier to understand for those that don't know the history of every player in the last decade. For the most part I'm not looking up stats but just going by memory since I don't want to spend a lot of time on this since I have a neverending pile of important writing to do. If someone wants to go back further than 2006 FA signings feel free to add them in (only if you do all signings though). mlbtraderumors has an easy to search database that included all of them back to 2006 and some before that. I will exclude the top 6 (studs, Japanese and 2012 signings) from the analysis for what should be logical reasons. This pretty clearly shows that you are not getting what you are expecting when you shop in the 35-80M range. You should be getting a solid #2/3 pitcher but out of the 11 starters left in this list there were only 2 solid starters that performed up to their contracts. 9 of the contracts were simply terrible. that is a horrible success rate and not even the best GM's are going to make good choices. Why don't the pitchers meet expectations? Some were not very good in the first place and were paid too much because starters almost always get paid too much in FA. A lot of them suffered injuries or went into age related decline. This shouldn't have been shocking since most FA starters are in their 30's. As a general rule of thumb teams should avoid long term contracts to 30 somethings. This should be common sense. Should the Twins avoid FA to add pitching? No. They should avoid anything beyond 3 years so that the damage doesn't last too long. The Twins are not poor and they can handle a short term 10M dead contract. 25-30M/yr until 2017 could be devastating. Luckily there are a lot of decent but not great starters on the market this year. They should be able to grab a #3 for 3/30. I would also contend that there really isn't a pitcher aside from Greinke (5/100 imo) that stands out from the FA pitchers. it's likely that the 3/30 signings could outperform the 5/60+M signings. studs that were signed as studs - I like this category of signing as long as you have the money and the pitcher is actual stud CC fort knox Lee 5/120 International FA's - originally excluded because of how I sorted at mlbtraderumors - both were around 100M guys with the posting fee. pretty much paid as studs. Darvish Dice-K - did not work out partly due to injuries too early to tell - can't really included since 75-80% of the contract remains. I'm not optimistic about these two pitching well in their mid and late 30's Buehrle 4/58 Wilson 5/75 somewhat decent guys that probably qualify as #3's Dempster 4/52 Lilly 4/40 most would consider these contracts brutally awful - Meche is the best in this group lackey 5/82.5 - pitched awful and had TJ in his 3rd season Ollie Perez 3/36 - was hurt for the entire contract and he was so bad when he did pitch that the Mets would have been better if he hadn't pitched Lowe 4/60 - he had ERA's between 4 and 5+ during his 4 seasons Burnett 5/82.5 - an alright first season but he was so bad in the next two that the Yankees paid the pirates to take him Silva 4/48 - he was beyond awful Zito - 7/126 - signed as a stud and performed as a #4/5 Suppan 4/42 - he was a #3 before and he performed as a #5 or worse Meche 5/55 - had two decent seasons before he wrecked his arm. he actually retired a year early and forfeited the final year of his contract Schmidt - 3/47 - I don't think he ever threw a pitch for the Dodgers. Ironically the giants let him go so they could make a bigger mistake signing Zito.

Fangraphs uses FIP (fielding independent pitching) to determine how many wins (above replacement) a pitcher was worth. Each WAR is worth X amount (4-5M). I use fangraphs and FIP (and xFIP) for a lot of things but I don't blindly trust numbers. It's really, really hard to come up with these numbers and there really isn't a perfect method. Some limitations to FIP for this kind of analysis is not taking into account park factors and league factors. There is another issue with using FIP. Some pitchers routinely underperform their FIP. That means that they consistently have a higher ERA indicating that for whatever reason that FIP cannot determine they allow more runs than expected. it's not a bad idea to use fangraphs, FIP, xFIP or other stats to determine but you also need to use your common sense. Lowe, Burnett, and lackey are pretty clear cut colossal failures in FA. If the Twins signed 1-2 pitchers for 50-75M and they pitched as bad as this trio this board would give them the Blackburn treatment. About the only thing this trio can claim is that they pitched better than the AAA filler that the Twins depended on this year.

Hicks has always been a prospect that people overrated when he was on a hot streak and then almost immediately underrated when he went on a cold streak. I was always frustrated to people's opinions swing so wildly in the span of a couple of months and never really understood. It should be worth mentioning that a couple of cold streaks coincided with a few minor injuries that he suffered.

Lot's of teams passed on Trout... ahhhh............ the classic type of response to support mistakes............ every kid says it....... "everyone else has one" ........people say it about steroids........ "everyone was doing it".... you are obviously correct, and obvious. 21 teams passsed trout, and the twins did too. that makes the ineptitude all OK, eh? i will get over it when and if gibson becomes a star pitcher, because he will have to be a star for that to happen, not just a number 4 or 5. Wait a second aren't there a lot of Twins fans suggesting that the Twins made a mistake taking a toolsy OF'er last year and how it would be a mistake to take a toolsy OF'er this year? This is pretty much exactly the same scenario. Every year players outperform their draft status. Perhaps Berrios will be that player from last year's draft that people say the same things about. I do think that Trout was pretty high on their list but they felt they couldn't pass on gibson when he fell that far. Gibson was and still is an outstanding pick regardless of what Trout has done. In fact if you go back and look at that draft there's a lot worse crap (most of it) that the Twins could have drafted. This 130 inning restriction sounds ridiculous. I'm not against being cautious in what is probably going to be a crappy year but shutting him down in July is excessive.

All of this info says that Lowe was worth 40M, Burnett 52M and lackey 23M? WOW!

I also gave an analysis that said 2 studs, 2 too early to tell, 2 decent pitchers and a big pile of crap. I listed Wilson and Buehrle but I think it's way too early to do an analysis of their contracts since 75+% is left to play out. My selection criteria had nothing to do with cherry picking so I could include Zito. Feel free to exclude him if you want. This was the only range that the mlbtraderumors FA database was searchable. So you think Lowe was worth 40M, Lackey was worth 23M and Burnett 42M because FIP and fangraphs says so then I honestly question your baseball analysis. If they pulled the crap they did with the Twins they would be lumped with the Blackburns of the world. They have been absolutely awful and no amount of FIP can convince me otherwise.

The answer doesn't change for the twins since they are not a good match for ARod but I actually think ARod will have a few decent bounceback seasons. Yankee Stadium has a short RIGHT field porch and left field is actually fairly large. ARod has also suffered several injuries in the last couple of seasons. It's not unusual for players to struggle when injured and then bounce back. Regardless this is an awful match for the Twins even if they ONLY have to pay 5/50 and not give up any prospects.

Sometimes I wonder how much actual analysis people do when posting stats. It's like they have made an opinion and look for data that supports it w/o checking to see if the numbers make sense. A) you need to take Sabathia, Lee and Darvish (and add Darvish's 51M posting fee) out since they are clearly elite and not part of the discussion. Elite pitchers actually work out pretty well. The ones that don't are the non-elite pitchers that get paid 12-15M/yr which is exactly what's available this offseason and exactly what people want to sign. Greinke is the only pitcher this year that is close to CC, Lee and Darvish and everyone says avoid him. In this offseason either you sign Greinke or you avoid long term commitments. I'm not sure you can include Wilson or Buehrle since the big risk with them is paying them 15+M when they are in their mid to late 30's. We don't have this data yet and I included them in the too early to tell group. C) extend your look to include those back to 2006 (or further) that I posted. It looks simply awful. D) this suggests that you believe in fangraphs WAR for pitchers - Lowe somehow earned 40M with ERA's of 4.67, 4.00, 5.05 and 5.11 despite pitching in a pitchers park in the NL? If you consider that 40M worth of value then I don't even know where to start because it's not 40M worth of value. He was awful. After adjusting your list you're left with: Lackey - 4.40 and 6.4 ERA's before having TJ surgery. Absolutely awful. Burnett - The Yankees got 4.00, 5+, and 5+ ERA seasons out of their 82M investment before eating a lot of his contract and trading him Lowe - the Braves got ERA's of 4.67, 4.00, 5+ and 5+ for their 60M Dempster - earned his contract and is one of only 2 guys going back to the 2006 offseason that has

Here's the thing - at some point this happens to teams that are successful for 10 years. Teams get old and it becomes very difficult to simply maintain the team much less add new players. tbh - We've been spoiled by a decade of winning.

The rotation is awful now. I didn't include the two most recent seasons because the Twins have had exactly one offseason to react to 2011 and I'm not going to create any trends based on one offseason. Before that the rotation was arguably solid. '09 got ugly but '10 rebounded well and I already showed that 2011 should have been decent with Liriano, Baker, Pavano, Slowey, Duensing and blackburn (only one season removed from back to back 4.00 ERA seasons) with Gibson in AAA. Do you think that the Twins should have been trading OF'ers or prospects for pitchers that offseason because that is your complaint?

Years and dollars.

Review this if you don't understand the long term risk. the risk isn't that you have 4.00 ERA pitchers earning too much money. The risk (pretty likely) is that you have multiple Blackburn level pitchers earning 12-15M/yr for a long time.

The rotation has been very solid except for one season until the disaster happened this year. you can say that it was obvious that the rotation looked weak going into 2011 but Liriano was coming off of a borderline great season and they had what should have been 3 solid #3's (plus Duensing and that crappy guy) behind him. '03 - 20th '04 - 4th '05 - 9th '06 - 9th '07 - 10th '08 - 15th - this is the first season w/o Johan '09 - 26th '10 - 16th - things looked pretty good going into 2011 unless you use hindsight

you say things like won't and refused based on one season. They have always had a pretty good rotation and decent depth in the minors so your historical trends are kind of worthless. Before last offseason they hadn't signed a FA to a 20+M deal either. The Garza/Young trade was also a first for the org. I've already told you what I would do. Try to trade for Shields (willy or Span), sign the best they can get for 3/30ish and bring back Baker on a 1 yr deal with 2 generous options (10Mish). that's the making of a solid rotation without exposing the Twins to significant long term risk. Your plan of signing TWO FA starters for 4/48-5/75 looks awful when you look at the utter crap that comparable FA starters have done. It sucks to lose but you don't fix teams in FA.

The '01 Twins and '91 Braves did it through the farm system and were built for long term success. They did not do it through FA.

I'll ask you how devastating it would be to have 23M locked up in Mauer and 24-30M locked up in what ended up being two mediocre pitchers. History says that you probably aren't even getting two legit starting pitchers for 12-15M/yr. Here is a list of FA starters since the 2006 offseason that fit your criteria (>3 yrs, 12+M/yr). There are 2 studs (well paid), 2 too early to tell, 2 alright pitchers (Dempster and Lilly) and a long list of brutal mistakes. Your proposal could be flushing 120-150M down the toilet and significantly extend any rebuilding that the Twins need to do. I do not like the prospect of being bad next year but you rebuild through the farm and supplement with FA. Spending recklessly in FA leads to becoming the Mets and Cubs and that is a very accurate comparison. They loaded their teams with expensive declining veterans and they sucked.

IIRC I think they end in early January.

It's what we do every year...

I think the idea that 112M isn't enough tells all we really need to know about some Twins fans.