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Willihammer

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Everything posted by Willihammer

  1. Willihammer
    Get out of the discard heap?
  2. Willihammer
    I suspect these are all guys who won't be on board with a minor league deal like Kubel was, all but locking whoever signs them into giving them PT and probably suffering for it.
  3. Willihammer
    "Kennys Vargas was told he didn’t have to play this winter, but he wanted to." Good to hear.
  4. Willihammer
    According to this
  5. Willihammer
    According to Masterson, the knee nagged him since the 2nd start of the season. However his sinker velo on the first start was 90.6, right in line with the rest of the year. Perhaps he hurt knee compensating for a third (initial) injury like an ankle or back?
  6. Willihammer
    I disagree. How many times do upside deals deliver sub-replacement level production? They aren't no-risk propositions people make them out to be. I'd rather see a healthy Reynaldo Rodriguez in left field than a gimpy 34 year old Alex Rios.
  7. Willihammer
    Kubel is a year younger with as much upside. Perhaps the Twins should waste another 176 PAs on him?
  8. Willihammer
    Were Santana's and Vargas's developments harmed? What about Colabello and Parmelee, do they need more time in the minors? I agree that as a rule, its not smart to plan on prospects to fill out your starting roster. On the other hand, you have to look at prospects on a case by case basis. The Twins should know better than anyone that minor league success or failure isn't an absolute determinant of MLB success or failure, and some guys will be ready before their OPS reaches a certain threshold while plenty of guys are never going to be MLB players no matter how much they dominate the minors. All I'm saying is if Rosario shares whatever characteristics that players in the former camp have, then the Twins should take their foot off the brake and press the gas just like they did with Santana and Vargas because clearly those two benefited from early promotion (as did the team).
  9. Willihammer
    And hadn't done well there (.268/.311/.381) The fact remains, there was nothing in Santana's MiLB record to suggest he would come up and be the Twins best hitter, but he was. And as mentioned, Vargas was the 2nd best hitter (in a small sample) without even facing AAA pitching first. If Rosario is ready for MLB pitching now (and I have no idea if he is), then he should be taken off the A-AA-AAA Path of MiLB Mastery and promoted as the other two were.
  10. Willihammer
    Maybe it snuck up on him? I've defended Hicks from the public venting from Gardy and Antony but he does seem to be a button pusher. Seriously, he couldn't have finished the season? Especially after missing out last winter (when he was asked to go)? edit: Never mind I misunderstood. Hicks did plan for it, he's only not playing because he was cut I guess. Have Ps & C's reported to camp yet?
  11. Willihammer
    How much BABIP regression will be offset if he can improve on that 23% K rate?
  12. Willihammer
    No no no Parker. Don't you know? Only lefthanders like the ball down in the zone - down and in, that is. Because, well, they're lefthanded, that's why.
  13. Willihammer
    How about the DL? Players don't like to pipe up when they're injured, we know this. We see it every year across the league. Heck Masterson didn't hit the DL til July - 19 starts in. This notion that if a guy is going to drop cleanly off the depth chart before the team falls out of contention seems ungrounded in how these things actually play out. You seem to think the Twins are an exception but we know of at least three players - Colabello, Nolasco, and Peflrey who logged a bunch of playing time while they were hurt just last year. These guys are competitive, they want to play. Certainly a guy on a one year make good contract is going to want to play too.
  14. Willihammer
    Sidney Ponson's 7 ERA or Jason Marquis' 8.5 ERA aren't sputtering. These are clear cases that fit the bifucated outcome theory. My point was that not every case is so clear cut. Correia and Liriano are two who fall into that third outcome and in both cases were traded after the team had played itself out of contention. That's the risk nobody seems to be considering. If Justin Masterson's mechanics are out of whack because his knee is bothering him, and he's throwing 90 mph instead of 93, and getting knocked around kinda sorta to a 4.7 ERA or something, those are the kind of performances that amount to a slow bleed over the course of a season.
  15. Willihammer
    A risky assumption. Not everyone turns in a bifurcated outcome where they stink so badly that they can be cut quickly at minimal cost to the W-L record ("Minimal," if you ignore the ~6m price tag on FA wins), or, they bounceback totally a la Kazmir. A third possiblity, maybe the likeliest, is that they just kind of sputter along at mediocre-to-slightly below replacement level value for an extended time. Eg. Dan Haren, Time Linceum, and some of the other bounceback guys that were discussed last offseason.
  16. Willihammer
    Its also worth noting that 2/7 of these guys were being talked about last offseason as bounceback candidates - Johnson and Villanueva. I'll ask again. If the Twins didn't already have Pelfrey and Nolasco under contract, wouldn't they be part of this list too? How many more bounceback candidates do we need?
  17. Willihammer
    4/32 was an example based on the $8m annual figure put forth to be spent on 1 year lotto picks. People get carried away with the bifurcated outcomes. I don't have hard data but the instances of players given 1 year bounceback contracts - starting pitchers coming off injury in particular, who turn in QO-level seasons seem to be very few and far between. Fewer and farther between than the healther, more productive pitchers who earn similar AAV's with longer term commitments, or that would be my guess. The market - particularly for starting pitching, isn't so inefficient that 1 year steals are just waiting around to be signed every offseason. Heck, finding a guy as productive as Hughes has been at 3/24 is extremely rare.
  18. Willihammer
    Seems like a great defensive replacement, pinch runner to have on the bench. He should not be in competition with Hicks or Rosario for a roster spot, IMO.
  19. Willihammer
    How often do these sort of players - pitchers, specifically, hit? Without knowing that, it seems hasty to say the Twins should be in on one of these contracts every year for ~$8m per. If the hit rate is less than say, your average 4 yr/32m contract, maybe its better to just ink one of those every 4 years instead?
  20. Willihammer
    Hypocrite warning, because I didn't like the signing at the time, but in retrospect a critical 4th reason that Hughes was a great signing was his good health. That doesn't apply to most of the players on your list. One could say Nolasco was "good when healthy" in 2014. Would he be on this list if he weren't already under contract? What about Pelfrey?
  21. Willihammer
    I appreciate that angle. I would counter with the majority of the Gardy years when middle infielders were health but getting production from them was a chronic problem. Part of that undoubtedly was that the talent just wasn't very good. Another part I think was in Gardy regularly rotating in the Alexi Casilla's, Brian Buschers, Matt Tolberts, and Brendan "Just Looking" Harris's in order to keep them "fresh." That's why they need to make a firm judgment about what kind of talent Escobar really is, IMO. If he's good enough to start, then he should start, and they can let a Doug Bernier or Ed Nunez backup the left side of the infield *only* if there's an injury. Those guys aren't hard to find. Likewise if he's a backup talent, then he should sit on the bench and shouldn't be rotated in ahead of better players just to keep him "fresh."
  22. Willihammer
    Escobar is a tough dilemma. He's sort of the poster child for needing everyday at-bats to get into a groove. From a purely asset-maximization perspective maybe the right thing is to exercise an option on Santana next season and start Esobar at SS. Give him a month to sink or swim. On the other hand, how can you option the best batter on your team? IMO trying to trade Escobar now, at age 25 with his mixed track record, would be like trying to trade Plouffe at age 25. Nobody is going to bite on an arb-eligible, no option guy unless / until he proves to be a starting talent. For that reason, maybe Plouffe is the release valve. He's had his late bloom. He's shown he's worth the arb-raises and can be a starter on a good team. He will have trade value. It comes down to making an accurate eval of Escobar's true talent IMO. Is he poised to take the next step or would he sink back into a .650 batter if the Twins rolled with him as the 3B option next year. They need to get this one right.
  23. Willihammer
    That's been the debate all along - what made Molitor the front runner? It certainly wasn't prior managerial success, or many other objective measures. In fact Molitor would seem to be at a disadvantage in many of those respects. On the GATG podcast, Bonnes tried to get McIntosh to answer the question "does being a good coach make for a good manager?" and McIntosh kind of skirted the question. That's really the $64,000 question nobody seems to have an answer for, and has lead some of us to conclude that maybe, Molitor's advantage isn't in his qualifications.
  24. Willihammer
    Seems like a pretty semantic distinction to me. Favoritism is not helpful to any process, like a personnel hire, where there are subjective judgments. Call it a dog and pony show or don't. If there is a "front runner" before the process even starts then it is by definition going to be unfair.
  25. Willihammer
    Like this post if you would have been upset with a Joe Maddon or Dave Martinez hiring
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