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TheLeviathan

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Everything posted by TheLeviathan

  1. TheLeviathan
    The list of regression vs. progression isn't favorable: Regression Worse: Suzuki (significant), Santana (Possibly crazy amount here), Vargas, Escobar Regression Better: Arcia, Mauer I think we're a bottom half offense next year, with a mediocre bullpen, and an improved rotation. That, however, is not the ingredients to contend. And even if Buxton and Sano come up we should temper how quickly we declare them the missing ingredients of a top ten offense. Rookies struggle the majority of the time and to expect differently is a bit naive. That isn't to write off the possibility, but it seems kind of silly to always talk of forecasting in the most pollyanna sort of way.
  2. TheLeviathan
    If people think this top 5 offense is sustainable then I have a bridge to talk with you about.
  3. TheLeviathan
    I don't think it would be impossible, I just don't believe the total sum of talent on the team is enough yet. It's getting closer though.
  4. TheLeviathan
    Um, how about Kansas City and Yordano Ventura just last year? (Who, by the way, had similar AAA numbers to Alex Meyer) Shelby Miller and Michael Wacha perhaps? At some point you need to allow your rookies to play and, you know, not be rookies any more. I'm not saying that I necessarily think Santana was a bad signing because he blocks anyone, but the notion that this team shouldn't rely on young players right now flies in the face of the kind of rebuild that is being done. If you know you aren't contending, that's PRECISELY when you should season young talent. When, if ever, do these guys come up if you have to know with 100% certainty they are going to be good to great? That seems like an impossible bar to reach in AAA given how subjective the idea of "readiness" is and how frequently the target gets moved.
  5. TheLeviathan
    On the flip side, you have to give players a chance to show you one way or the other. Competent players making the league minimum are extremely valuable to a club. I'm not worried about Santana blocking someone necessarily, but it puts more of an onus on last year when there was opportunity but the team declined (for whatever reason) to use it.
  6. TheLeviathan
    I agree, but I would suggest teams that add assets through all means have that reflect in their payroll eventually. Usually sooner rather than later.
  7. TheLeviathan
    Again, how is that any different or worse than any single other way of projecting? The very nature of predicting the future is devoid of real analysis all the time.
  8. TheLeviathan
    Woofta. First, they're not posting to the decimal point to show off or pat themselves on the back, it's just how they crank out their numbers. Second, neither Steamer nor the poster here has pronounced themselves Vegas-proof and the new Nostradamus. They don't have to be 100% accurate, but they are right often enough that consulting their projections is at the least a sometimes sobering and sometimes encouraging ballpark to work from. I mean, I don't ignore you because you get things wrong sometimes and aren't 100% accurate, I'm not sure why I would ignore a mathematical projection system either. I'm also not betting my mortgage on what you project Phil Hughes to be, but nor am I doing so by Steamer. And nor, as far as I can tell, is anybody else. The problem comes from these silly overreactions to them both pro and con.
  9. TheLeviathan
    You just set a Twins Daily double negative record and I think you lost your own point in it. You can do nothing and hope to get better but it's far less likely than actually trying to add assets to get better.
  10. TheLeviathan
    I remember some lengthy whining about this same thing in regards to Joe Mauer last year and the starting pitchers and how did that turn out?
  11. TheLeviathan
    Except, in many ways, we are shareholders. It isn't a perfect analogy, but there isn't one for this situation because professional sports operate outside many normal business rules and scenarios. The closest thing to what the Pohlads are doing, in my opinion, is pocketing things behind the backs of shareholders. Having a higher payroll does not mean winning more games by and large. But with 100% certainty I can tell you that the Pohlads pocketing money does NOTHING to win more games.
  12. TheLeviathan
    I would suggest it's bad for business to essentially pocket money from your shareholders.
  13. TheLeviathan
    No team manages to baffle, intrigue, horrify, and infuriate me all at the same time quite like the Marlins.
  14. TheLeviathan
    No I totally agree with the problems the Twins' method has had as well. I have repeatedly stated they have roughly equal outcomes. What bugs me is pedestalizing a White Sox method that has the same results.
  15. TheLeviathan
    He had 300 at bats in the minors total, I would call that rushing. Especially since another 80 of those came AFTER his debut.
  16. TheLeviathan
    You think 25 years of yo-yoing and "nearly good enough" is just baseball randomness? The more you claim to be neutral the less you sound it. The Sox problem is that they are constantly patching on the fly and by the very nature of how things come available and how patches work - they often flop or have a short shelf life. Here are just a few examples: 1) In order to not have a sustained rebuild they rushed Gordon Beckham to the majors. 2) They patch their lineup with the likes of Kotsay and Pierre because that's the best they can do 3) No farm depth means they trot out a group of hitters in 2011 that are impressively awful with no alternatives 4) They give Keppinger 500 ABs at a Puntonian level of production I could go on. The truth is that the Sox have a problem getting over the hump because they constantly exhaust themselves trying to stay semi-relevant. Their patching isn't sustainable because you often have to invest more resources to do what they do. The Twins strategy requires the investment of time and a combination of luck and good scouting. The Twins could learn a few things from the way the Sox use their resources and the Sox could learn a few things about avoiding the constant depletion of theirs. That's how you find sustainable success, but to claim this notion that the Sox should be commended for staying relevant is like commending the Washington Generals for always being the one mentioned with the Globetrotters.
  17. TheLeviathan
    But what you seem to ignore is that they can be almost as equally confident to be notably worse soon after. So as a fan and a club you are basically using the scatter-gun approach of team building. I prefer a more sustainable model, something neither the Twins nor the Sox feature because of how extreme their tendencies are.
  18. TheLeviathan
    But confidence in what? That they'll have a temporary, eventually fruitless, rebound for a year and be no closer to a sustainable winning track? I'm not sure why yo-yoing from awful to pretty decent is something to admire. I put it about the same as being pretty decent for a long stretch followed by awful for a decent stretch. I admire some of what they do and I'm certainly not putting the Twins way ahead of them. I think they're two very different ways to get largely the same results.
  19. TheLeviathan
    I look at their strategy as tantamount to banging your head against the wall. Constantly being "second banana" because your team building strategy has the patience and long-term thinking of a fruit fly leads to plenty of frustration too. I know the Sox fans I know from down there often get as frustrated with the up and down nature of the team as they do with the losing. It speaks to either having no vision of the future or one that frequently fails - hard to see any other way around such erratic play from year to year. To go back to my analogy, just because you occasionally take a bit of plaster out of the wall doesn't mean you're getting any closer to knocking down the wall. I like elements of what they do, but I wouldn't want the Twins to emulate them in total.
  20. TheLeviathan
    My wife, a lifelong White Sox fan, laughed when I read that last line to her. And having lived in Chicago for awhile I can tell you that most White Sox fans do not have such a positive spin on what you're speaking of.
  21. TheLeviathan
    Yeah? What value exactly? It hasn't won them over much in terms of fan support or a reputation as a perpetual contender. The Sox have largely been a middling team with zero success for much of their existence, so I'm not sure what you're hanging your hat on here.
  22. TheLeviathan
    They've also devoted significant resources and been basically the same as us the last decade. It's not that any of their moves are horrible, it's just that they are always thin (which bites them in little ways that hold them back), they're always chasing, and they're always inconsistent. (Odd as that might sound) Every now and then those inconsistencies smooth out and they perform decently, but just as often the patchwork roster construction and thin depth catch up to them and they give 500 at-bats to Gordon Beckham, Jeff Keppinger, or keep shoving Jordan Danks out there. (Or John Danks for that matter) None of that is to put the Twins on a pedestal. In my opinion they both suffer from the same problem of being too comfortable in their heavy handed approach. (Over Aggressive vs. Pathological fear of Aggression)
  23. TheLeviathan
    Yeah the price for Shark is reasonable, rental price or no, and is like Laroche a lot at his price. All that said, I wouldn't declare this anything more than an aggressive, interesting set of moves because we've seen these same moves fail often. Personally I prefer an organization that operates closer to the middle of those two poles you speak of. I see some smart ideas in both, but often carried too far.
  24. TheLeviathan
    Yup, a lot of Twins fans do it with the Tigers too and it's just not the right way to approach this. The reverse is also true - just because a team is aggressive doesn't mean they've automatically done the right thing either. I get that people want to fawn over a way of doing things that contrasts with what we are accustomed, but that doesn't make it sounds strategy. The moves the Sox have made are aggressive and interesting, but they've had trouble fitting these sorts of moves together for some time. That's the real key. But not every evaluation of another team needs to keep coming back to a compare and contrast with the Twins. That's unnecessary and sidetracking.
  25. TheLeviathan
    Since it had nothing to do with my point, not really. Kudos to them for their aggression, but we've seen these same moves flop for them many times. So I always treat them as very wait and see.
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