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TheLeviathan

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Everything posted by TheLeviathan

  1. TheLeviathan
    You know what isn't a sample? His 1,000 at-bats. Do you know what his career OPS is? What is K-BB ratios are? Let's be real - the only way his offense looks anything other than "bad" is if you play the small sample game. As a whole - it isn't good.
  2. TheLeviathan
    A like didn't seem sufficient for this post. Spot on.
  3. TheLeviathan
    I think zeros on paychecks matter about a gazillion times more. The dynamic between teams and players/agents is already adversarial. It happens in every arbitration meeting. Every contract discussion. And if what you said was true...no player would've ever agreed to be part of the Miami Marlins organization since about 1997. No team has jerked people around more than them and they still sign FAs, agree with draft picks, etc. There is zero evidence for teams acting selfishly has any impact on player acquisition and reams of evidence to the contrary. No, I don't think what the Twins did to Buxton means squat to any other player, agent, or anyone not named Byron Buxton. And even he won't care if enough zeros appear in an offer.
  4. TheLeviathan
    Do they? Until this the Cubs were the most notorious abusers of this....have you seen any meaningful impact?
  5. TheLeviathan
    Guys get jerked around a lot and still answer the bell when the money is right. Hopefully he turns this into a motivating factor and the Twins can eventually make it up to him. If not, they reap the benefit of three awesome years of Buxton and the opportunity to trade him when he has actual value. But let's look at this as objectively as we can - the Buxton that feels so slighted is also the one that can't hit his way out of a paper bag and would be worth diddly in a trade right now. The FO gambled that he'll be worth more than that at some point over the next three years and they know they at least have a chance to extend that longer if bygones are bygones. The flipside is that the cost is on the front end in pissing him off. But really...what's the downside from the organizational level? He becomes less valuable? Hard to imagine. He becomes a permanent non-contributor? Well, he's basically that now. You can't put him in the field every day when he can't hit. The upside? He becomes what you want him to be and you get an extra year of him on the team. I think the calculus on this is pretty easy, even factoring in the human toll.
  6. TheLeviathan
    I won't disagree it might have human consequences. It might seriously upset Buxton and wreck any chance of him going back to July/August 2017 version. The human toll here is hard to know from the outside, but I absolutely accept the possibility and acknowledge it. But they did it for long-term benefits to the organization. Your characterization of it was wholly inaccurate.
  7. TheLeviathan
    We are past "early season slumps". He's had over 1,000 at bats, it's time to stop these ridiculous characterizations. His offense has been bad. His defense is amazing. His offense has been largely putrid. Can we please stick to reality and not forget what doesn't fit our narrative? And, as far as I know, they offered him an extension. He refused. To construe their decision as "short-term" is seriously mistaken. Doesn't mean you have to agree with it, but you have completely missed the boat for why they did it if you still believe that.
  8. TheLeviathan
    Buxton was not about a short term benefit. There is room to criticize the FO, but their reasoning was the exact opposite of that. Buxton has largely been bad at his job, you should keep that in mind in your analogy too.
  9. TheLeviathan
    In fairness, that article about Pressley doesn't suggest the Astros fixed Pressly. Alston is specifically credited for getting him to use it and pushing him to keep using it. Frankly, I think most of these issues still stem from the state the franchise was in when these guys took over. Two years is not a lot of time. Luhnow didn't rebuild in two years either.
  10. TheLeviathan
    I never remember this many impassioned pleas for Pedro Florimon. He put up an 11 WAR defensive effort for us at one point. But most of us folks saw his awful hitting and said "nope". If Buxton can't hit, we'll have to say "nope" to him too.
  11. TheLeviathan
    I'm not sure you'll ever see specifics. That would be seen as an unnecessary shot at Terry Ryan.
  12. TheLeviathan
    We've heard rumblings that they've had to spend a lot of their time fixing the systems behind the curtains. By all accounts I've heard, the Twins were running two-bit operation. To use an analogy, it sounds like everyone else was streaming and the Twins were still adjusting the rabbit ears and coax cables.
  13. TheLeviathan
    Winfield Sr.was one of my all time favorites, looks like the Apple didn't fall far from the tree. I also grew up near Norseland, so hard not to like seeing Annexstad succeed. That Russel Wilson impression he pulled on the 13 yard first down was stupidly fun.
  14. TheLeviathan
    Helluva game.
  15. TheLeviathan
    The circumstances with Buxton were unusual, yes. No one disputes that. However, the behavior by the Twins - protecting team control by manipulating service time - is universally common. In my opinion, that leads to a more likely outcome in this hypothetical.
  16. TheLeviathan
    Except, I do have evidence. I'm not inferring when I state that teams value control and GMs acknowledge manipulation. Yes, I'm inferring from the hundreds of examples that those values were applied in those situations, but I have strong reasons and logic for doing so based on those facts. You are purely speculating, I am not. Dismissing my examples, that have real facts beyond them, because it doesn't fit with your version of events is not good form. You can disagree, you just do so in the face of stronger evidence. And here's Keith Law adding more evidence to the pile: Keith Law 1:27 Completely disagree with it, and I think he should file a grievance - I think more players should fight these manipulations, because teams do it with impunity right now.
  17. TheLeviathan
    From Passan: I hate doing it,” said one of the many general managers who has engaged in service-time manipulation. “But if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing my job.” It stands to reason teams care about this all the time. Let's stop treating the Twins as an exception. You can still disagree with the move without making them a villain relative to other teams.
  18. TheLeviathan
    Cute, you have no evidence but take issue when I post an example. What you have is a narrative (Twins = outlier) and nothing but speculation. Whereas I have examples and the very real value of control to teams to support my contention. Yeah, I'd drop the tangent too.
  19. TheLeviathan
    Just because you don't hear it, doesn't mean it isn't happening. Buxton has high name recognition and I'd acknowledge it's more rare for a player like that. Although, Profar was a high name recognition guy for a long time and Rangers fans might have felt much the same way Twins fans did. We don't hear much of these sorts of things because it's more localized to particular fan bases. The average baseball fan probably heard and cared about the story roughly as much as they did about Vlad Jr. It's only really a big deal here. It's barely getting a fraction of the national attention Kris Bryant did, for example. As for Drury, my point there was to show that the Yankees do care about service time. Even for a guy that most people see as a rotational/bench player. Also, it was suggested that it was unique that Buxton had this happen at this point in his service time, but Drury has had a lot of major league at-bats to be left languishing in the minors in the name of service time. I'd all but guarantee this happens more regularly than we know around the league and even with the Twins. Team control is seen as a highly valuable component to a player's value, it only stands to reason that teams would incorporate it heavily in many of their roster decisions.
  20. TheLeviathan
    Or just less publicized and easier to hide. At the end of the day it's about keeping them down a certain amount of time to protect team control. We only see the surface of how much it is considered and only rarely do teams even come close to acknowledging it. The career starting decisions have a couple reasons for being more widely publicized, but the practice is hardly limited to that. I literally searched "Yankees service time" and got an example from this year that dispelled the notion you were throwing out there. The noted examples are numerous enough, I imagine that is but the tip of the iceberg. And you don't have to do much reading to hear GMs acknowledge it anonymously.
  21. TheLeviathan
    Here are the Yankees actively jerking around Brandon Drury over a similar issue. It even mentions how they kept Torres down for similar reasons. The suggestion that big market clubs don't care as much or don't do this is flat out false. Everyone does it. All the time. To all kinds of players.
  22. TheLeviathan
    No, you spoke of how the union would treat Buxton based on whether he was officially a member or not. That's irrelevant. As for the rest, debuts are the most common, but do you really think teams aren't considering that factor other times as well? That they make a July call-up, send the player down, and then just stop considering service time the second or third time they are called up? The debuts just get the most coverage, but service time manipulation is happening constantly to players. And no, we know that all teams play service time games. Not just the small market teams, as Bryant is a glaring example of. Makail Franco is not exactly playing for the Tampa Bay Rays either. And I could go on. Players might feel burned by interactions they personally have with some organizations, but what the Twins did to Buxton matters diddly squat to Machado. Any player that tried to say "I won't sign with a team that manipulates service time" - they'll have to sign with the St. Paul Saints.
  23. TheLeviathan
    The union isn't battling things whether a guy is officially union or not. They fight based on ownership over-reaches. So I can't see how that has any significance. The Bryant grievance was still filed, whether he had played in MLB or not. This one will be filed just the same. And the result will likely be the same in both. You can argue the circumstances are rare, and I'd agree with that, but service time manipulation is something all teams engage in. That is common, though it comes in many forms and with many lame excuses.
  24. TheLeviathan
    I think the only difference here was the Twins openly citing service time. Otherwise I think this exactly what every other team would do. Sox and Jays are doing it too. Cubs might have the most glaring example ever. Didn't impact them one bit in FA.
  25. TheLeviathan
    Since every team is a bad actor in this regard, would it really matter? Cubs did it with Kris Bryant, didn't seem to hurt them. Just one example of many.
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