TheLeviathan

By statistical measure, and this falls in line with historical trends for shortstops his age, he's not the defender he was. The stats being used are wrc+ or OPS+ because they capture a fuller picture of the hitter's performance and then compare it to other shortstops/players around the league. Meaning the numbers we're posting capture the more complete story (Simmons is a bad hitter this year) and only fairly compare him to his peers at SS. (Which, again, compared to other shortstops....he's still a bad hitter) These are not "fantasy" stats or "bookie" stats. They are mathematical formulas that more accurately capture player performance. By every statistical measure we have, Andrelton Simmons is a bad baseball player. Nick Gordon might be too, but if he's not it helps the 2022 Twins. Simmons has no present and no future in helping the Twins.

There isn't a single Hall of Famer anywhere near that bad that has played professional baseball . Literally no one.

I fully admit, I'm not a fan of 60 OPS+ players in my favorite team's lineup. I'm a crazy person, clearly.

How can I argue with a position that cherry pick one measure to make their point with massive amounts of evidence to the contrary? Stone cold logic there sir.

Only twice in his career has his OPS been above average. And only barely both times. He has been demonstrably below average with the bat his entire career. He's going to 32. He isn't a hitting coach from being an asset. He's more likely an even worse liability than he already is as age saps his defensive abilities.

So our plan, from someone who keeps harp on winning as the most important, is to give a 32 year old, who has never been a good hitter, a hitting coach and he'll.....magically not suck anymore? Good lord.

FFS.

If Lewis is ready and our best available shortstop, then we can move Seager or Story or whomever to 3B and our infield defense is all the better.

This team seems inclined to shell out for hitters and has done so with Donaldson. In general, it's the safer investment of money than in a pitcher. So, with that in mind - go hard after Seager. He could be a cornerstone for close to a decade and you won't regret the money you paid out. He's 27, he can hit, he can field, a deal that's 8 years/200M is probably what it'll take and this team can afford that. Plus, he plays and helps out every pitcher who is put out there every day.

Well....you got one part of this right, but I got that feeling at the end of your post. I get that you think what you posted was well reasoned, but it was entirely composed of specious arguments. I suspect you might already be aware of that, if not you've consumed the misinformation intoxicant like a champ.

Quick thoughts: *It's not fair to dismiss the turnaround they pulled off with this club two years ago. What they did remaking that team from a pretty uneasy future to instant success is a feather in their cap. *It's also not fair to overlook just how badly they mangled the moves on the pitching side coming into this year. Every single choice they made flopped. *It's also worth noting, excuse or not, that the pandemic hit this team's gameplan pretty hard. I'm sure it hurt all the teams, but it definitely hurt the Twins on the pitching side significantly. That should be part of the evaluation here too. *2022 had a poor path to contention since about May 1st and got substantially worse as every major pitching prospect went down for lengthy time periods and stunted their development. Trades or not, let's not pretend one dude somehow is the magic elixir between 2022 Twins as champs or not, that's being naive. This team was always going to need to do significant retooling to their pitching to fix it for next year. Impossible? No. Unlikely? Yeah. We just went from 20 to 1 to 25 to 1 or some rough equivalent. Some of you are spinning the Berrios trade as giving away Babe Ruth or breaking up the '27 Yankees all in one trade. *I need to see where we are in August of 2022, at that point I'd feel better about evaluating them. I'd hate to cut ties as their moves show fruit and I think that's a fair timeline to harvest.

Well, that generally goes without saying.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I think if we're going to comp Gordon and Baddoo, it seems more likely that Gordon IS Baddoo than that he causes someone else to be. Nick Gordon was frequently in the top 100 prospects or close to it throughout his development. High draft pick with pedigree. Was moderately successful in 2019 and then pandemic nonsense. If there is anybody worth rolling the dice on it's him. Especially when we are regularly fielding guys with significantly less upside right now and likely going forward.

Opportunity to showcase the future is nice when your team is awful. Even moreso when those opportunities yield fun results!

Jon Gray is the guy I'd lock on to personally. Also, there are a lot of good shortstops on the market this year and it might be the ideal time to buy in on one. Go sign Corey Seager for a boatload of money and toss 4 years and 60M at Jon Gray. If not Seager, take your pick with guys like Baez, Story, Simien, etc. This team is already better than the 2021 version without doing anything more. And they have two top 100 prospects on top of it.

Yeah, I am for sure making an "is" argument over an "ought" one. What I will say is this, if you've come to terms with the idea that the Twins aren't going to spend 25-30M on a single starting pitcher, especially one intent on trying the market, then this deal is a no brainer IMO. Instead of Berrios and his salary and an impending loss of him to FA, we now have more money immediately and long term to find his replacements and more prospects/talent around which to build the team. Part of how a team like the Twins win isn't in having a few very good to great players like Berrios, but in having a major league roster with as few bad players as possible and a couple studs sprinkled in. At this point, our major league roster this year and next year just has too many negative players to be optimistic and one Jose Berrios doesn't change that. Making this trade, however, gives them more assets towards that end, especially from 2023 and beyond.

I don't think it's fair to say the Twins can win bidding wars in FA with the heavy spending organizations. Baseball has a serious problem on this front, I'm not sure why we're approaching the system in denial of that. We don't have to like it. We can find it morally wrong. Yet, nevertheless, this is our situation: we won't be outbidding the big dogs and Berrios wants to let the big dogs fight over him. We'd all love to be in a situation where keeping Jose Berrios made sense. All of us. We all wish the organization's status with MLB-ready pitching was better. But it's the reality of both of those things that make the analysis of this rather simple, if depressing. He isn't staying. The Twins aren't going to spend 30M on a pitcher because that's not the way they operate. They don't have anyone ready now or for next year that can step in and make this team a contender. We look like a retool for 2023 by all probabilities. Given that, it makes more sense to have two well regarded guys that could be here in 2023 over a guy with 0% chance. The sober part is about not letting the emotional arguments you keep make rule over the cold analytical ones. Hard as that might be.

I agree, it's both.

It's a W in the sense that they got much more value than was expected. And it was a W relative to other deals for other similar players who moved at the deadline. It isn't mutually exclusive that the team also will suffer immediately from losing Berrios and that the Twins did very well given the circumstances. 0% chance is not entirely on the Twins either. That's the marching orders Barreiro is preaching in the media market and he's mostly grasping for straws. (Reusse too. On the basis of haggling in arbitration....which happens ALL THE TIME. It's literally what the process is: quibbling over thousands) Jose Berrios wants to experience FA. He can't do that by signing an extension. I'm sure if the Twins threw some absurd amount of money at him he might change his mind, but the money it'd take to do that is not what I think any Twins fan would agree to pay. (Say....5 years, 150M) So, no, that's not on them. That's how the system is built. Good for Jose that he gets to set his terms and his valuation and let suitors come to him. He has earned that privilege and there is nothing the Twins can do about that if he has his mind set to do so. Given that's the case, you have to weigh the prospects of what 2022 looks like because keeping him guarantees you a vastly diminished return in a trade. The 2022 staff is still a bad pitching staff with him and there are less tradeable assets and less money to improve. Now they have more options because they chose to maximize his trade value. I don't think 2022 is a contention year, I think 2023 is more likely because of the state of their young talent and what 2020 did to delay that pipeline. Is that a certainty? No. But no one gets to deal in certainties, only probabilities. All the probabilities point to this series of decisions being the right ones. We seem to be trying to paint people as "lusting for prospects" when all that's really happening is a sober take on where we're at. No one wants to be at this point, especially not with the expectations we set out with. But this isn't a fantasy land where you can just will the team to success on the basis of your undying love of seeing them play right now. Good teams, that retool quickly, don't double down on mistakes and hang on too long out of denial.

20 and at AA....that part can't be said enough.

I have heard multiple people lament hos loss. I have done so no less than three times. It has been acknowledged. We just added two top 100 prospects who immediately slid into the top 3 in our organization. Top 100 prospects hold a crap ton of value in trades. I don't know what the future holds in terms of how they will help the club....but I also haven't declared the next year, or two years, or decade a waste because we traded one pitcher. Yeah...maybe 2022 sucks. But it looked like it was bound to be a longshot with or without Berrios. What I do know is waiting dramatically reduces his value in trade for a player we have zero chance to retain long term. Deliberately tanking that value to buy in to 2022 seems like the kind idea you don't need hindsight to warn against.

He has said everything but that. He has made it crystal clear he simply isn't interested in an extension. That is a factual, vital part of evaluating the situation. I love Jose. I'm sad our situation forced these choices. But I can't remove the context and then judge the move fairly. Not once in this thread has it felt like you fairly weighed the context/realities of the situation. It's ok to be pissed or worn down or sad....but it's leading to completely unfair arguments born of fantasy rather than reality.

I'm not confident they can add much talent to the roster hanging on to a guy who has every intention of not being here in 2023. They could take these two prospects and use them to add arms. Martin and somebody for Zac Gallen. Woods Richardson and another piece for John Means. Bam. Better 2022 Rotation. And 2023. And 2024. These are the kinds of things you can do when you have assets to move.

I think ashbury and mike answered this well, but I don't understand why it was a question at all. So much of the discord in here feels like people are tailoring the context of this trade in strange ways that omit key reasons why it makes so much sense to pull this trigger. Take just a few: 1. Berrios has made it abundantly clear he isn't interested in an extension. Short of "Pay me 5 years and 200M or I'm going to let the Yanks wine and dine me"....there isn't much mystery about his intentions. That means in one season and two months you have as much control over who he pitches for as every other MLB team. 2. Trading him at the next deadline will dramatically reduce the return. I can't emphasize dramatically hard enough. 3. If your plan is to outbid the Yankees....you get your shot in 2022 I guess. Plus the guys we just got! 4. Jose Berrios and a bunch of question marks is not a contending caliber staff. 2022 doesn't have enough ready starting pitchers to supplement Jose. Now, let me add a few personal contextual bits I think are worth noting: 1. The Twins just got more for Jose Berrios than the Nats got for Scherzer AND Trae Turner with a similar level of control. 2 I'd trade Berrios for Turner 102 times out of 100 straight up. 3. The Twins could, conceivably, turn around this offseason and make two separate deals with these guys as lead parts of the package and come back with two arms as good (or nearly as good) as Jose. This is what could happen because now the Twins have more assets to make the 2022 team better than one guy who has made it his outward goal to bet on himself.

Signing him to a one year deal with a guarantee he walks in a year? Sure, if we are a piece from a World Series I say absolutely it's a HR. But that isn't our situation.