Willihammer

Guys with Revere's speed don't just go year after year with BABIPs in the low .300s. Its not a statistical certainty, but for my money I'll take the over on Revere popping out at least two years in the next 5 where his BABIP is north of .340. And if your retort is based on his ground ball tendencies, my answer is that you have to weigh those against his IFFB tendencies, which is almost zero.

To me, its more a question of when, not if. Between Revere's speed and his ability to put the ball in play, he could post a .340 BABIP or higher in any given season like Pierre has, and Span has, in which case he becomes that .350 OBP, 4-5 win player, and a lot more expensive.

Revere isn't any fast guy. He's the fastest player in baseball over the last two years, if you put any stock in fangraphs baserunning and defensive metrics. And no, bringing Hicks into the discussion doesn't cancel anything. Where guys bat in the order tends to be overblown. I would only call him a 9 hitter inasmuch as it might be favorable for the Twins in a contract negotiation.

This is a somewhat circular argument. Part of the reason Mauer batted well with runners on base last year is that the guys in front of him were speedy. Mauer had a .288 BABIP on ground balls, in part because the mere threat of having Span or Revere standing on 1st created a nice hole for him on the 2nd base side. Then there is the fact that Span and Revere both run 1st to 3rd, 1st to home, 2nd to home at a rate higher than league average.

You have a point. But I think we all know Gardy will slot Revere at leadoff whether he deserves to be there or not, after which point I imagine it becomes a lot less easy for the Twins to say in any contract negotiation or arbitration hearing that Revere is not your team's leadoff hitter. As it is, arguing for him being the 9 hitter may be tough, since Gardy batted him mostly in the 2 hole when Span was here. Honestly, I don't know if his spot in the lineup matters much anyway, either from a strategic standpoint or a contract negotiation standpoint. My argument boils down to the fact that barring injury, regardless of where you bat Revere or place him in the outfield, he is going to deliver a relatively fixed value that is around 2 wins at minimum, for every 160 games played, due to his speed, and could be as high as 4-5 wins with a little batted ball luck.

What is acceptable? Revere's .333 OBP was .014 points higher than average. but, my argument all along is that Revere should be extended, and paid, as a 9 hitter, not as a replacement for Span in the order at leadoff. Mauer or Hicks might be the better choice for that.

Baseball Reference tracks situation baserunning. Revere is above average in every respect http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/reverbe01-bat.shtml comparison to league average. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2012-baserunning-batting.shtml Fangraphs measures the baserunning value at 14 runs over the past two years, playing 120 games/season.

I have now. Its a good read but James is hung up on the stat itself and ignoring the broader skill of good baserunning that good basestealers tend to be. First to third, first to home, 2nd to home, tagging on short pop flies, etc. These are all peanut skills in an of themselves but when you can do all of them, and steal 50-60 bases when given full playing time, the peanuts add up quickly. There is also the fact that the Twins are among the worst teams at hitting home runs in an era when homeruns are trending down leaguewide.

OPS is a convenient stat when you want to undersell a no power high contact speed guy. One of the differences between extending Revere now, compared to Blackburn, is that Blackburn was coming off two of the best seasons you could reasonably expect to get from a guy with his stuff. Guys who get no strikeouts and rely on batted ball luck and borderline strike calls have very low floors, as we all know by now. The luck Blackburn had in 2008-2009 just doesn't go on for years on end. Revere on the other hand, has his value preserved by speed. Speed is a large part of the reason Span's deal didn't prove a bust when his luck returned to earth likek Blackburn's. Yes, there is risk Revere breaks an ankle or strains a calf and he becomes worthless until healed. Injury risk is part of the genesis for these team friendly deals in the first place. But if he doesn't miss significant time, then worst case scenario we get more of what we've already seen with Revere's .308 BABIP and ultra low walk rate. There is a cliche, "speed never goes in slumps." Advanced stats are starting to prove the truth in that. Speed that is as elite as Revere's is worth roughly 2-3 wins/year on average, in just baserunning and defense. That, or production a hair below that, is his floor. The ceiling is something like Juan Pierre's age 25-30 seasons where he had a couple .320, .340 BABIP years. I believe that Revere is capable of improving his ground ball tendencies and improve his walk rate by just taking more pitches in hitter counts (Pierre hit the ball on the ground 61% of the time in his age 24 season), during his arbitration years, and then the savings will start to be realized. There is also the fact that where Pierre was peaking towards the end of the steroid era, Revere is peaking during a time where the stolen base and speed are more valuable than ever. The break even point on stolen bags is down to like 64%. Its ridiculous. So there is some marginal value there just by virtue of how his arbitration years line up with leaguewide trends.

I'm not sure how much say Leslie has had in who starts at QB. He was the Vikings first pick after all.

I like Hannahan. There's a chance his true platoon split is greater than his career averages would indicate. At worst, he's about league average vs. RHP and should be a better glove over there.

I don't see why Musgrave hasn't gotten Webb into the action. Obviously he's not a long-term answer either but this team could still steal a playoff spot. They need a shot in the arm from someone. Maybe bring him in as a wideout and call a few end-arounds with the option to throw. We did that with Moss all the time back in the day to great effect and he threw like a girl.

What are we up to in terms of the likely amount of cash Jr can blow this offseason. $30m after moving Span? I think if Blanton takes less than a third of that next year, and isn't locked up more than 4 years, we are doing okay. Something like 4/36. He is a half-calibre better than your Jeremy Guthries and Kevin Correia's, in my opinion. I feel like he will get a lot of cheap 3 year deals and the team who offers a 4th will take him.

Blanton isn't pretty but if Jr can get him for the right price I would be hardpressed to argue about it.

Interesting. This from the first BP article is encouraging: It would seem there are some simple things Doumit could do to improve.

The Rangers are at this moment trying to nab Andrelton Simmons from the Braves in order to flip him for J Upton. They already have Andrus and Profar. A surplus is a terrific problem to have when everyone is cheap, any manager or GM will say as much. Because whatever internal logjam might occur, it says nothing about their tradeability or the supply of outfielders in other organizations

Getting back to the projecting part, surplus of what? Surplus of minor league talent? You trade away your MLB players when they gain value in order to make room for wildcards who haven't don't a thing at the MLB level? I guess I would rather see the farm guys who do end up sticking it in the MLB, stay on my team.

OK well if Hicks and Benson are both better players than Revere by 2015 and one of them displaces Revere in CF then there would still be a 3rd outfield spot to fill, and Revere could easily be the best guy to fill it. But, put aside for the moment any projections about our farmhands. We have just witnessed how - even when you buy high on young players, like we did with Span - because the Twins did it early enough and for cheap enough, Span's "team value" still went up even though he regressed. I mean, Certainly Meyer is a better return than anything Span would have fetched as a mid-summer rental earning the market rate and going year to year. Can we agree on that? Except, with Revere, to extend him now, the Twins would probably be buying low, and Revere would, if anything, progress over the course of the contract. Consider the possibility that Revere's BABIP spikes to .340 next year. Span had two such seasons before he extended (.339 and .353 to be exact). Suddenly Revere puts up a .306/.348.350 line (along with more steal opportunities, thus more steals, and the usual great defense, great baserunning, etc). What does that do for the arbiter? It would not take long to start seeing the millions slipping away. But, if after 2014 or 2015 everything on the farm has worked out perfectly - meaning 4 of Hicks, Arcia, et al are MLB players than Revere - and there is a buyer out there who likes Revere - now that buyer's almost certainly going to give you a bigger haul for him. Where is the downside?

After two years then, who is your outfield, with Revere and Willingham gone? Hicks, Arcia, Benson, Rosario, Buxton, Kepler... There's no shortage of Twins outfield prospects. Where does Joe Benson's or Aaron Hick's minor league track records compare so favorably to Ben Revere's minor league track record. Why would you expect them to be better than Revere at the Major league level? Then you have Buxton and Kepler who are still in A Ball. How is floating Revere something like 5/14 with a 6th option so much riskier than penciling in Buxton and Kepler into your 2015 and 2016 outfield?

Why not a 3rd outfielder?

After two years then, who is your outfield, with Revere and Willingham gone?

After Span's first two seasons, he had for his career a .305 average and an OBP of .391. And in March 2010, the Twins offered him a 5 year, 16.5m contract with a team option for 2015 valued at $9m. As we all know by now, this has proven to be a very team friendly deal, despite the fact that Denard never again produced at his 2008-2009 levels. So, after 2 seasons watching Revere, Is it time for the Twins to offer him a similar extension? By comparison, Revere is hitting for a .278 average and getting on base at a .319 clip. His current career BABIP of .308 is a full .040 points lower than Span's was after 2 seasons. Further, Revere is every bit as able to put balls in play, avoid striking out, and leg out infield hits. Revere was 2nd in baseball in infield hits with 58 over the past two seasons (behind Ichiro) and 9th in bunt hits, despite the low BABIP - facts that tells me that Revere's batting average is more likely to go up then down, as his BABIP settles in somewhere in the neighborhood of .320-.330. It also is further evidence that Revere's speed is even more elite than Span's. Where Revere excels in speed however, he has (so far) lacked the ability to draw walks, and this is again favorable for the Twins from a bargaining standpoint. He would be better suited to the 9 hole, and a 9 hitter's salaray. Yet, Revere's 5.2% walk rate can hardly dip any lower going forward. It is already the 16th lowest walk rate for the last two years. So, given that Revere is more likely to outperform his career averages going forward, then to underperform them (as Span did), there is doubly a reason to extend him this offseason. Thoughts?

Some napkin math because I'm curious. The Dodgers and angels tied for the worse rating in 2011 at about 1.2. Rating is percentage of households tuning in. They jumped 70% in 2012 however, so let's say they stick at 2.5% for the next ten years. 3250000 households in LA, so that's roughly 812500 households tuning in for a game for the next ten years. The Fox deal with the Dodgers is between 6 and 7 bil (no exact figure yet). Say 6.5 bil. Over 25 years, at an average inflation rate of say 3%, that works out to about 6 billion even in today's money, that's guaranteed. I don't know the specifics of the fee schedule, but if its close to linear, that would work out to about 240m / year in fees charged. TimeWarner is the big fish in LA I think, with 1.7m subscribers. Asssume they are the one to ink a deal with Fox. Assume further, that Time Warners subscription go up to an even 2m as an average over the next 10 years. That's $2.4 billion to be charged to 20 million yearly subscriptions for Fox Sports. Works out to a $120 fee per year per subscription over the next 10 years just for that channel. As stated above, only about 812,500 watch a game. Barely a third. Time Warner (assuming the reach an agreement with Fox) would quickly have to adjust their packages if they are going to keep those 1.2 million subscribers who aren't tuning in to watch the Dodgers. They'd have to make Fox Sports an opt-in, or break it down into a partial package type deal. Whatever Time Warner does, they're going to have to raise the rates on the people who are subscribing for Fox Sports. Just as a comparison, its like $160 for the full mlb.tv package right now. Although I hardly think MLB will let MLBAM ever charge less than what the networks are charging to cable providers, so that price will go up too. The net result, I think, is that people just tune out, ratings fall, and Fox can't make its payments. Especially if the Dodgers aren't perennial WS contenders.

That's a circular argument though. Baseball has huge revenue because of the t.v. contracts. The Dodgers just inked a 25 years 6+ billion deal. 25 years! Do you think 10 or 15 years from now, people who don't give a damn about the Dodgers are going to keep paying $50 a year (or whatever it works out to) for Fox Sports LA just so they can get the cable package that allows them to watch whatever post-reality postmodern ultra high def 3d Real Housewives that's on a different channel? I seriously doubt it.

I had to read that twice, because I wasn't sure if you were referring to Gonzalez or Millone as the MLB ready #2 (You're referring to Gonzalez, right?) edit: because, at the time, they were both MLB ready no. 2's, even if BA didn't include Millone in their rankings. Gonzalez had a great year. Bill James thinks he will regress back into that no. 2. So, Peacock, Cole, Norris - they were all just gravy for the A's, along with the 3 extra years of team control on their new no. 2 starter. edit 2: again i don't have an angle. I'm not trying to grill JR or anything, I just can't get over how some of these deals come to pass and others don't.