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Willihammer

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Everything posted by Willihammer

  1. Willihammer
    I never played as Oddjob except to retaliate for someone else selecting Oddjob first, which as any Goldeneye player with a clue knows is fair and justified
  2. Willihammer
    I bet Levi was Oddjob too, because unwritten rules are stupid.
  3. Willihammer
    Here's how Katoh ranks the Twins prospects by projected WAR through age 28: Rank Name WAR through age 28 1 Jorge Polanco 2.7 2 Aaron Hicks 2.5 3 Kennys Vargas 2.5 4 Byron Buxton 2.3 5 Josmil Pinto 2.2 6 Danny Santana 2.1 7 Zach Larson 1.9 8 Eddie Rosario 1.7 9 Daniel Ortiz 1.4 10 Travis Harrison 1.2 Last summer I used the Javier system developed by Chris St John at Beyond the Boxscore to come up with a position prospect ranking. Luckily I saved the results, the post isn't readable anymore http://twinsdaily.com/blog/277/entry-5221-twins-top-19-position-prospects-as-ranked-by-javier/ Basically, Javier ranked the Twins top prospects in the following order of most likely to be "productive" players (defined as "At least 1,000 PA in the majors and at least .0275 VORP per PA."), based on their age-level-statistics in 2013 in the minors. 1 Jorge Polanco 2 Byron Buxton 3 Travis Harrison 4 Max Kepler 5 Aaron Hicks 6 Eddie Rosario 7 Brian Navarreto 8 Zach Larson 10 JD Williams *Sano broke Javier because his zISO for a 20 year old in the Eastern League in 2013 was 4.1 standard deviations from the mean and there were no MLB players in the population to compare him to. As you can see, Polanco gets love from both systems. Hicks and Buxton are in the top 5 of each, Rosario, Larson, and Harrison crack the top 10 in both systems. Not any overlap after that.
  4. Willihammer
    If the plan is to move Dozier to a mid- or big- market team, than this may be the best route. Personally I was replying to the idea of "wait a year then consider an extension," which I think would all but defeat the point. The only upside to that route is if Dozier craters in Joe Mays like fashion next season then you're off the hook. But I think its more likely that Dozier is a good player again in 2015. You could structure an extension any number of ways, I think the one Seth offered is on the high side. If I were ownership I'd think about a 4 year extension with a team option for his first FA season. I don't think that would make Dozier much less tradeable and actually could make him more attractive if you're trying to partner with a small market team where arb raises impact payroll more than they do for the Twins.
  5. Willihammer
    I can't think of an extension signed early that has haunted anyone, actually. In fact, the Singleton extension is the only one I'm aware of that might not break in the team's favor, and its still very early on that and the total risk is just 10m (truly more like 8m). OTOH I can think of quite a few where extensions signed late that are looking to be a lot more favorable for the player.
  6. Willihammer
    Every interview of a pitcher who faced him. Wow, that is remarkable.
  7. Willihammer
    It seems to me that in today's game, teams that wait for a player to cement himself as a talented player face paying a price close to the FA rate and also need to buy out years they might rather not have under contract anyway. The second Pedroia extension, for example. The real savings seem to be in extensions signed before a player has 100% case closed established himself, eg. Longoria, Vogelson, Pedroia (the first extension)). Dozier is about at that point, I think, so this would be the offseason to do it, if at all, IMO.
  8. Willihammer
    Universal? Really? FWIW I would have voted for Gwynn too, based on his 8 batting titles which seems like a more concrete way of capturing Gwynn's otherworldly excellence at hitting (even if its not the best stat for measuring his overall production or offensive value).
  9. Willihammer
    First off, I admit Raines was before my time and I never actually watched him play (that I can remember), so I am going just off his BB-Ref page. His SB's are impressive but in Raines era they were worth, according to the weighted values of the 80s, just .2 runs, or roughly 1/11th of a home run. So even with 808 steals that's not such a huge amount of production in itself. And then there are the caught steals which obviously have a negative run value. They net to about 100 runs. I'm sure there's more value that SB/CS totals don't capture that add to his impact on the bases. On the other hand, that speed didn't seem to translate to very good or even above average OF defense, strangely. edit: As for your link, I don't like going down the road of comparing candidate-x with player-y already in the Hall. Even in Gwynn's case, he was selected in 2007. The advanced stats we used to compare players weren't as trusted or accepted back then. Batting average and RBIs still carried a lot of weight which we now know to be pretty meaningless. It seems disingenuous to make a sabermetric argument for Raines and then compare him to someone like Gwynn who was selected primarily for his batting average.
  10. Willihammer
    Are they that good? He drew a ton of walks and has a batting title to his credit but 170 home runs from a left fielder? His ISO is the same as Alan Trammell's. Only, Raines' defense was about 30 wins worse, according to dWAR anyway. He had a great career and if there were a Hall of Very Good he'd be a shoe in, but he wasn't elite IMO.
  11. Willihammer
    Yeah, this is why I can sympathize with the BBWAA voters. As soon as you try to determine who was clean and who wasn't, you are probably going to get a few wrong. I do think its worthwhile for them to gather all the available facts and make a judgment based on some threshold of evidence. As opposed to throwing up your hands and saying "we can't know for sure so the PED issue shouldn't factor at all." My ballot would look like: Johnson Mussina Bagwell E. Martinez Schilling Piazza
  12. Willihammer
    best of luck to Parmelee, but I agree his future, if there is one, is on the bench. I would be surprised if any team, even a last place one, gave everyday at-bats to him because they felt he didn't get a fair shot in MN.
  13. Willihammer
    Looks like Stauffer has a slight reverse platoon split - .260/.331/.406 vs RHB and .255/.317/.395 vs LHB. The changeup I assume, although it looks like he's not afraid to throw that pitch to same-handed batters (14% against RHB in 2014 were changeups). Maybe he was a guy Neil Allen liked?
  14. Willihammer
    I'll be honest, if I were the one sitting at the table with binders full of crap for me to sign, my autograph would quickly revert into a scribbly signature. I wonder if Killebrew had anywhere near as many fan events and such in his day (or even Hunter, Morneau, Cuddyer, etc).
  15. Willihammer
    That's the part I'm crossing my fingers about. The OF defense was bad last year, it probably will be bad again, hopefully Hunter has it for one more year and recovers more runs on Offense that Hammer, Colabello, and Kubel didn't.
  16. Willihammer
    I believe Dozier is pretty much what he showed us last year, over the whole year. A good glove, good baserunner, good eye, decent but streaky pop, someone who plays the game hard. Kinda a poor man's Pedroia. The question is how will those skills age over the next 5-6 years or whatever term an extension would be. Looking again at Pedroia, he's a 30 year old former MVP that the Red Sox locked in to a 7/55 extension after his 2nd full season (age 24), which is where Dozier is at only he's 3 years older. Last year, Pedroia's skills declined somewhat (the eye was merely good and the glove was still elite). He also spent a good chunk of time on the DL. Overall he was still a very good player (4-5 WARs) and easily worth the 12.5m he was paid. If Dozier's skills/body age similarly, its probably realistic to expect him to drop into the bottom half of 2B's around the time the Twins control over him is running out (after his age 31 season). I still wouldn't be opposed to an extension but I would want pretty favorable terms if I were the Twins.
  17. Willihammer
    So what you're saying is, Nunez may end up looking like Florimon?
  18. Willihammer
    LEN3 talked to Rob Antony yesterday (18:00). http://www.iheart.com/show/139-Common-Man-KFAN-FM-1003/?episode_id=27117866 Nothing new really. Milone was the first name Antony mentioned after Nolasco, Gibson, Hughes, and Santana. Said May could "challenge" for the 5th job and Peflrey could "battle" for it. Also said Stauffer could "be a valuable bullpen piece if he's not in the rotation."
  19. Willihammer
    Assuming the front 4 are healthy (knock on wood) I think Pelfrey gets it. Its a contract year, I think they hope he can be healthy and effective enough to keep Milone, Meyer and May in AAA until the deadline. I suspect Ryan would love to trade Nolasco this summer too.
  20. Willihammer
    I also have no problem with Santana logging more innings in the OF. He looked OK out there to me and while I'm not gungho about Escobar, I would prefer his bat to Schafer's or Hicks.' Molitor can always swap in a better defensive arrangement if the Twins manage to get a lead.
  21. Willihammer
    Before I add my own ballot, I'll touch on PEDs. I've flip flopped on the topic a few times, but right now I'm on the anti-PED side. For starters, these players cheated. The substances they took were banned. I know there are cheaters in the Hall already, I don't care. The Hall doesn't have to be perfectly consistent, I certainly wouldn't ask that it be consistent about honoring cheaters. Secondly, one of the Hall's missions is to honor in-game excellence. If I had a vote, I wouldn't be able to judge a suspected cheater's level of excellence to be greater than a non-suspect with any confidence because its impossible to normalize for the effect of PED usage. For writers in the anti-PED camp, I imagine the hard part becomes figuring out who are the most likely PED users. Fortunately the Mitchell report did a lot of the investigating for them. The names in that report include the guys found to be most connected to BALCO and who would seem to be among the most likely PED users. And of course, some of those guys ended up confessing. The players on the 2015 ballot who also showed up on the Mitchell report are: Bonds Clemens Sheffield We also have various leaks through the years from lawyers and people privvy to drug testing results dating back to 2003. The most famous leak probably being the ARod leak for which he served his 162 game suspension. Sosa is implicated in a similar leak. (So is McGwire, but he confessed anyway). That brings the tally of PED-linked names to: Bonds Clemens McGwire Sheffield Sosa Am I missing anyone?
  22. Willihammer
    Its funny. To even get on the ballot you have to be nominated by TWO of the 6 members of the BBWAA Screening Committee.
  23. Willihammer
    Here are this year's candidates: http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2015.shtml And a refresher on the Hall voting procedure: http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/hof_voting.shtml Go!
  24. Willihammer
    Yes. Wait I mean No!
  25. Willihammer
    Yankees land Eovaldi and Garrett Jones for Prado and Phelps.
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