kab21

And right now Hughes knows that he is just a season removed from a 5ERA and getting kicked out of the rotation. There's still a discount available. The important thing here is that the rebuilding is targeted to last longer than the next 2 seasons and the Twins don't want to be filling another hole in their rotation in 2 years. There are some decent prospects in the minors but he needs to be locked up. Of course he's not going to keep walking 2% of runners. Chances are that he doesn't keep allowing 30% of the runners on base to score either. Right now he has a few lucky/unlucky metrics in his stats and they probably cancel out. I don't think it would be shocking if he was a 3.50 ERA pitcher for the next few seasons. Extending him for 12-15M for 3 more seasons would be brilliant.

It's the best of a bad situation. Kind of like the complete opposite of the Johan trade. The important thing is that the Wolves took the best talent and will worry about where to play people later. A sure way to lose a trade is to focus on needs. The Wolves are bad and almost certainly not a playoff contender (in the west). It's much better to have talent in that case. The trade looks particularly good since Philly gifted them Young in their pursuit of tanking. I'm not a big fan of Bennett's potential but he could be solid. It will be interesting to see if there is any wheeling and dealing before the season opens. There are a lot of players and only so many minutes to go around. Holy crap there are a lot of mediocre veterans on this team.

It's strange that extensions have been talked about with all kinds of Twins where it didn't really matter. Suzuki (whatever), Dozier (in arb for 4 more years or something), Willy (whatever) and even Arcia. But never Hughes. FWIW - Hughes WAR is being calculated based on a 2.61 FIP. The expectation from fangraphs is that FIP is a more accurate projection than ERA. He has been unlucky with stranding runners this year and FIP takes that bad luck out of the calculation but leaves in his lucky (6%) HR/FB rate. He's been good but nobody is going to expect a 2.61 ERA out of him in the future. Still it's not that crazy to think that he could get 80M in a couple of years if he does what he did this year 3.50ish ERA.

Your assessment of the padre trades is not accurate at all. Headley was two months from FA and having an awful year. Getting nothing shouldn't be shocking. Street was traded for 4 prospects and was thought of as quite a haul for the Padres. Cashner is in arb for 2 more years and has been really good (actually awesome) for the last two years. If he's healthy then he's worth a lot. You can't just trade some spare parts for a really good player. I'm not sure that Marte's price ever went down.

The fact is that the Twins need one steady OF'er next season since everyone else is question marks. Perhaps Aoki as a stop gap everywhere guy that is underrated and presumably fairly cheap.S Seth Smith mashes RH'd pitching and could platoon with someone fairly cheaply. I like the Victorino idea. I don't have a problem with Melky or Markakis but think the contracts will get too long and would rather the Twins focused long guaranteed money elsewhere. if I had my choice the Twins would ante up Scherzer or Lester (or Ervin Santana) instead of splitting that money between a few positions and getting okay players.

Jordan Schafer should not play any position other than 4th OF'er or AAA CF'er.

It really isn't any different though. Chris didn't hit the ball well but the metric said he did. That could be true defensively. But usually if someone has a hot streak they are actually hitting the ball well and the same is true defensively. If someone is making a lot more plays than usual they are probably having a hot streak defensively. It doesn't make them a great defender but they are making plays/outs.

You are still misusing the one sentence of fangraphs analysis because if you take as part of the larger analysis there is a much different conclusion. Offensive stats are accurate the same way defensive stats are accurate although defensive stats have more room for error. We know a hitter got a hit the same as a whether or not a defender made a play or not. We don't know if a hitter got a hit because he hit an easy fly to Delmon and Delmon spun around 5 times and ended up doing a faceplant. The same is true of defensive stats. We don't know why or how someone makes plays but we know that a positive UZR means he's making more plays than another defender. BA and offensive stats don't tell you if a hitter actually hit the ball well no more so than measuring the number of plays that a defender makes tells you he plays good defense. It does tell you that he makes outs. The reason imo why fangraphs wrote that exact quote is because there are things that UZR doesn't even attempt to include that influence how well a defender actually plays. It doesn't take into account bad/great defenders that increase/decrease the number of plays someone makes. It doesn't take into account ballpark or environmental effects (neither does BA). It doesn't take into account defensive positioning decisions made by the manager. It doesn't take into effect relay throws, receiving throws or tagging runners. And probably several other important defensive qualities that are hard to quantify. Nobody has said that it's perfect but if you actually look at a relevant numbers (multi season) they do actually tell a pretty good story of defense.

Chris Colabello did in April. Parker (or someone) did an analysis that concluded that he wasn't pulling many balls and just dropped them into the opposite field while connecting with a few HR's. He didn't hit the ball very well or often but they dropped for hits. That's a perfect example of what they are talking about.

Please don't selectively quote long texts. Also from fangraphs and it explains exactly what they meant by your selective quote. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-fangraphs-uzr-primer/#15

I'm not sure if this actually is a counterpoint to anything I said. A small sample size of data is not useful by itself in almost every baseball and non-baseball application. And I think your argument basically explains the logic that significantly more data is needed for defensive stats which is what everyone in this thread has been saying is needed. Don't use a misuse of UZR as a counterargument to using UZR. I remember the 80 runs saved (or was it 40?) analysis but I don't know where that data came from anymore. His UZR/150 games in two Twins seasons was only about 14 and his career rate is 15. This does make him one of the best defensive CF'ers but not exponentially better than the other good CF'ers.

BA with RISP from 200 odd PA's (2013-2014)? This is a poor argument due to small sample size.

Offensive stats are inaccurate for the same reasons in small sample sizes. It would not be a fair conclusion to say that offensive stats are also inaccurate in larger sample sizes. I know that you do not trust defensive stats at all but when I look at multiple years of data for players I don't find a lot of surprises. Usually they match up with observations. Looking at 1/2 or 1 season of data isn't much different than looking at 1-2 months of offensive data. All sorts of players have great hitting months even if they aren't very good. I also disagree that a player can have a great UZR rating in a small sample size while playing terrible defense. It's not as reliable as hitting but that player made a lot of difficult plays and avoided missing easy ones. Of course it doesn't take into account defense after the initial batted ball (tags, scooping the ball at 1B or relay throws) but a player with a great UZR rating did make a lot of plays.

Ervin Santana as well. I think people overrate the strength and depth of the rotation. It's better but it's still not very good. The list of players that I would take over Parmelee is considerably longer. I would also take Willy, Morse, Cuddyer, Markakis, Aoki (CF), Seth Smith (platoon), Hunter, and probably a few others. Unless Parmelee plays great in September. I do not want to see him penciled in as a starter next year. His numbers just continue to drop. One alternative would be to take a flyer on Jake Peavy on a 1 yr contract. Boston and the AL East is a pretty bad place for a flyball pitcher. If it worked he might be the 1st/2nd best starter on the team. I wouldn't be against adding a Frasor (solid/excellent older arm) or Motte (upside) on a shorter term contract (1-2 yrs). Spending big money on RP'ers like Miller is silly but you can pick up some solid guys that could be the 2nd best RP'er on the Twins for reasonable dollars. Part of the reason for this is that it's going to be difficult for TR to spend 30M/yr in FA (take the 2015 payroll to 100Mish) unless he is bidding on a top starter (and this is unlikely). There just aren't many places to spend money and it's silly not to sign a guy to a short term deal when he is better than your other options. And you pick up a trade asset.

Talk about taking a comparison to literal. Rosario has had a disastrous season after several setbacks. Using this year's stats in a critical manner and ignoring his previous success is frustrating. Rosario never was going to be hitting a lot of HR's despite mashing the ball in Etown and Beloit. He profiles as a good BA, good OBP, moderate power (10 Hr's with doubles), good enough defense to play Cf but better off at a corner spot type of player. That is basically what Dejesus is.

I would be fine if the Twins signed a nice SS that would be very good for 3-4 years. Unfortunately that player rarely is available and he is never cheap. I would not be happy if the Twins signed Cabrera because his defense is already questionable and his bat is nothing special.

Let me play doctor for a little bit. When you have an injury or are recovering from an injury it's pretty common to injure another area because you are overcompensating for that injury. If he also got a nasty virus during that time it would affect how much rehab he could do further delaying his return. As a fan you hate uncertainty though. You want to hear X injury (a normal injury) and he will return in Y weeks (typical recovery). I do not like diagnosis that is nothing more than 'we don't know what's wrong or how long it will take' but stuff like that happens. I didn't like bilateral leg weakness, Morneau's concussion, Meyer's shoulder issue last year, Rosario's issues this season or Buxton's recent injury. At least with Sano we know what is wrong and when he will be back. Unfortunately not every injury is as clearcut.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions though. He has not tumbled too far to me. There were some on here that overrated Rosario last year putting him up in the Buxton/Sano tier. I hope those aren't the same people that see his value tumbling so much that his bat doesn't look like a corner OF'er now. He's had a tough year but is obviously a better player than he has been this year. He still definitely looks like a good corner Of'er but the entire time he has had more of a David Dejesus profile instead of a classic slugger profile.

I'm not saying that a run scored (offense) isn't equal to a run saved (defense). The reason that this isn't true is that a player's offense doesn't measure into a run scored metric (other than the obvious) and first must go through all kinds of mathematics to output a number. Defense stats first face difficulty in accurately measuring plays made that are better or worse than the average defender. But the even bigger issue to putting offense and defense on the same scale (runs) is that you need to mathematically determine how many plays made equal one run.

Alex Gordon is basically the poster child of my two main hesitations about using WAR as a definitive ranking tool A) sample size - defensive data does have value but multiple seasons is needed for it to have any value at all. Gordon is a good LF'er defensively but he's having one of the best defensive seasons in the MLB this year (not taking into account positional adjustment). Typically his defense rates a little above average so he benefits from a small sample size defensively. quantifying defensive and offensive value (and pitching) using the same scale - Defense is important but I have never really agreed with fangraphs WAR about how much value is assigned defensively. Does heyward's great defense in LF really boost his average bat that much? Imo Freeman is an infinitely more valuable player but he will at best match Heyward's WAR averaged over multiple seasons.

The one difference is that there is a group of Twins fans that don't give Joe his due in his normally good season because he doesn't hit HR's or drive in silly RBI numbers.

You are only focused on 2015 and have limited your options to Escobar and Santana at SS/CF. The important thing for next season is to focus on 2016-2018 and get Santana ready to be the SS when there are hopefully other better options in CF and Santana gets bumped to LF where his bat is not great (or even good). Do you think it's entirely fair to judge a player this harshly based on spring training when they are likely still a little rusty?

It's pretty common for catchers to take a day off in a Saturday night/Sunday afternoon situation. I understand the Mauer dislike but his career stats are pretty great. His career OBP would rank 3rd this season. His career OPS/wOBA/wRC+ would all rank top 20/25ish in the majors this season. He might not hit HR's but he is really good. I expect Mauer to have a typical season next year and none of his detractors will give him his due. they will just say that's what he's supposed to do since he is getting paid big bucks.

I rather like xFIP for forward projection. It's not perfect for a season in review but ERA is pretty bad also. Strasburg has had a much better season than his 3.50 ERA suggests. Saying that he has had a better season than Felix or Kershaw is silly though.

WAR is a good quick and dirty way to value a player. There are many flaws for it to be used as a definitive value. For one it's very difficult to put defensive value, offensive value, positional value and pitching value onto the same scale. Inevitably when these are combined they result in a questionable answer. Another big issue is that WAR is often used with too small of sample sizes. Santana has only played 62 games so far. Offensive stats need 1+ seasons of data to be useful. Defensive stats needs 3x (ballpark number) to be close to be useful. One thing that I find odd is that pitching tries to eliminate luck from the equation by using Fielding Independent Pitching (at fangraphs) while offensive WAR doesn't care if someone has had a historically lucky season. For example Santana currently has a .395 BAPIP. Joe Mauer has one of the highest active career BAPIP's at .348 so it's safe to assume that Santana's BAPIP is going to drop a lot. His WAR looks good when he has .840 OPS but if/when his BAPIP drops to .320ish his OPS is going to drop below .700. Still a valuable player but not great like his current WAR says.