Otto von Ballpark

Of course, the A's are dealing with a payroll capacity that's maybe ~70% of the Twins. There's a argument that the Twins are unnecessarily limiting themselves by playing exclusively in the "value" transaction waters, when they have the resources to take better risks than Oakland. FWIW, the A's may have also gotten better value out of Bailey -- a fungible prospect and league minimum salary in exchange for his pennant race services. I think this contract might have been better received if the Twins had actually scored Bailey at the deadline too, instead of leaving the postseason rotation as thin as we did.

In terms of fWAR, Martín Pérez posted a 1.9 last year. At $4 mil for a one-year deal, was that "really great"? How much did it move the needle on the Twins 2019 season? I think that's the issue with Bailey. I don't think anyone disputes that he could provide decent value to the Twins on this contract -- but value doesn't necessarily equate to meaningful impact.

Bailey's K% jumped last year, but still not even up to league average (21.4%, versus MLB non-pitcher rate of 22.4%).

2.9 fWAR, based on his FIP. Bailey's actual runs allowed only resulted in a 1.8 bWAR for 2019 -- 75 starting pitchers posted higher bWAR marks in 2019. Sometimes FIP looks like a good bet, but Bailey's career seems to be a story of FIP outperforming his ERA. Fangraphs gives him 16.4 fWAR for his career, but only 10.0 RA9-WAR, and as mentioned, bWAR likes him even less (5.9). Reminds me of Ricky Nolasco, who had 20.7 career fWAR when we signed him, but only 11.2 bWAR. And of course Nolasco was 2.5 years younger and without the arm injuries... Bailey's not necessarily a bad pitcher, but given his age and track record, he seems firmly in the average / back of the rotation camp. Is that what the Twins FO had in mind when they brought up the term "impact pitching" this offseason?

From the other thread: True, although Cruz was just a 1 year FA deal himself. And after Cruz, we signed Parker, Perez, and Marwin -- interesting moves but probably of limited impact. I wouldn't say that example suggests a lot more "impact" activity remains this winter.

Start of spring training is correct. We did the same with Pineda a couple years ago -- signed him in December, put him on the 60-day IL in February.

This is a random topic for December 2019. Look, obviously Votto has gone off a cliff the past two years, but no, from 2012-2017, the Reds were not particularly limited by having him on their team. Here are the Reds NL ranks: 2012: 9th in scoring, 12th in OBP 2013: 3rd in scoring, 2nd in OBP 2014: 13th in scoring, 14th in OBP 2015: 12th in scoring, 11th in OBP 2016: 8th in scoring, 12th in OBP 2017: 8th in scoring, 8th in OBP Does that look like a team that had trouble driving in runs? If anything, it looks like they scored a little more than expected, based on their baserunners. It was arguably even tougher at Votto's spot in the lineup, as outside of Choo's one season in Cincinnati in 2013, the batters directly in front of Votto were atrocious at getting on base. Reds leadoff hitter OBP ranks: 2012 - 30th 2013 - 1st (Choo) 2014 - 28th 2015 - 29th Even when they had Choo in 2013, they managed to rank 30th in OBP at the #2 spot, right between them! By 2014, the Reds also starting moving Votto himself up to #2 in the lineup. Combine that with a pitcher batting 9th, and it's not a recipe for RBI totals. Additionally, 2013-2015 were the 3 lowest run scoring seasons in the modern era (1993-present), and 2011-2015 were the 5 lowest scoring seasons. So Votto is going to be at a disadvantage compared to other players whose primes didn't coincide with a mini-deadball era.

Is this a prediction, or have you come from the future to help us?

No, it means left side, as opposed to up the middle or right side. You can see this by just taking the total MLB pitching split for groundballs, where it shows 53167 total batters faced. If you then add left field to the groundball split, you get a subset of 20374 TBF. Do the same for center, you get 17153, or right, 15640. Add those 3 together, and you get the same 53167. So every groundball in their system is also tagged with either left, center, or right. There is no distinction between "infield" or "outfield" groundballs. Edit to add: And back to the White Sox specifically, you can look at the advanced fielding stats for Tim Anderson and see that in 2019, he was much closer to average in range (RngR) than in errors (ErrR). He was also above average in double plays (DPR or rGDP). That profile is consistent with preventing hits at a league average rate, but having below average DRS/UZR metrics. https://www.fangraphs.com/players/tim-anderson/15172/stats?position=SS#fieldingadvanced https://blogs.fangraphs.com/glossary/

Nelson Cruz signed a 4 year deal, age 34-38, and it worked out pretty well! There is always risk, no guarantee, etc, but Donaldson was perhaps good enough at age 33 that he has some room to age over the next few years and still be a valuable contributor.

Just to be clear, by "left field", I mean "left side". AVG on ground balls to the left side was .234 in 2019, both for the CHW pitchers and for MLB as a whole. Up the middle, CHW .278, MLB .269, and to the right side, CHW .190, MLB .202. Which makes me wonder if errors are the primary source of those negative DRS figures. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/splits-leaderboards?splitArr=11,76&splitArrPitch=&position=P&autoPt=false&splitTeams=false&statType=team&statgroup=2&startDate=2019-03-01&endDate=2019-11-01&players=&filter=&sort=23,1

Just thinking that two guys in this class may not want to sign in the same place and have to compete with each other. (We do have spots for both at the moment, but the presumption is we could/should trade for a better SP yet this offseason.) Even with Pineda's suspension, neither Wood nor Walker probably wants to get squeezed out by May 10th. And no, I don't know how the Mets signed both Porcello and Wacha. FWIW, Porcello got a higher guarantee and is a NJ native, plus Wacha is a former client of the Mets GM. But generally, teams generally don't sign FA starters once they already have 5 spots presumably filled. Of course, that's presuming they have multiple comparable offers. If the Twins offer a few extra mil in base salary over the next highest bidder, maybe that would be enough enticement.

That's my point too, and Sano plus Castellanos might be a double shot of poison on defense.

Because it's easier to trust one guy, than two? If Sano is at 1B, that means we upgraded defensively at 3B. If Castellanos is at 1B, that means Sano is still at 3B...

The Diamondbacks also just traded their top SP at the deadline and see themselves as contenders. Makes sense they would have been interested in adding a SP this offseason. Could mean Ray is available, but with a contender, that's tricky. They might have a specific return in mind rather than a generic prospect package.

Yeah, I get that. I'm just not so sure. 1B was pretty open the last 2 years for the Tigers too, with Cabrera hurt or parked at DH, and Castellanos didn't get a single look there. And he's got a 112 wRC+ Steamer projection, 120 ZIPS. That's not bad, but not really worth a 4/60 investment from this Twins team either. If we was willing to sign a 1 year deal, maybe it would be worth a gamble -- but even then, if his 1B defense isn't very good, you're kind of stuck with him there for the year.

Here was a Fangraphs article from September: "No, Nicholas Castellanos Is Not Getting a $100 Million Contract" https://blogs.fangraphs.com/no-nicholas-castellanos-is-not-getting-a-100-million-contract/ Unless you *really* buy his Cubs HR binge, he doesn't look like a particular good investment for the 2020 Twins.

MLBTR predicted a 4/58 contract for him at the start of the offseason, so I'm guessing you're a bit high. Either in your estimate or otherwise. He hasn't played 3B in two years, and he wasn't good there, or anywhere else. And DH is blocked in Minnesota, at least for 2020.

That's not necessarily a bad profile. Wasn't that the case with Phil Hughes too? Arrieta? Walker was a 1st round pick, top 10 prospect, debuted at 21, best season at 24 before he got hurt at 25, still only 27. Should be affordable, not much risk, with upside. Wood would be good for a similar role too. Could just come down to which one your scouts (and medical staff) like the best.

Yup. Another way to think of it: how much more valuable was Eddie Rosario in 2015, with his affordable 109 RBI season ahead of him plus 6 other seasons of team control (4 at league minimum salaries), compared to Eddie Rosario now, with that affordable 109 RBI season in the rear view mirror and only his last 2 arb seasons ahead? Yes, there was some more uncertainty in Rosario's future performance in 2015, but position players near MLB aren't *that* hard to project with a reasonable level of confidence. Predicting Rosario's career 108 OPS+ to date would have probably surprised no one back in 2015. And Kirilloff now would be closer in value to Rosario circa 2015, than to Rosario today.

As a poster, I want to say you proved no such thing. You've been given many examples of successful aggressive moves by comparable revenue teams and you've simply created new criteria to dismiss them all, to the point where your criteria is trivial more than meaningful. Even by your own self-selected criteria in this thread, you can't reasonably dismiss Cueto (and Zobrist) simply because "the World Series only lasted 5 games." And as a mod, I note that by your own description, you are not addressing specific posts or posters in this thread, but rather general arguments you perceive across the site. You have repeated these same general arguments in many threads previously -- see the comment policy example of "inserting a pet idea into thread after thread": http://twinsdaily.com/topic/8228-twins-daily-comment-policy/?p=164092 You are welcome to create a blog post if you want to write about this general topic further. Otherwise, when participating in the discussion forum, I ask all TD members to stick closer to the actual discussion thread topics -- and if you feel others are causing the discussion to drift, try to reel them back in. A good way to do that is ask for clarification on a point they are making, tying it back to the thread topic, rather than going further off on a tangent. I'm locking this thread, as it has outlived its usefulness.

These projections do account for defense -- it's fWAR for pitchers (based on FIP), and includes dWAR for position players. Now, those individual dWAR figures at this point might be based on opportunities in front of a league-average K% / GB% staff, or in front of the 2019 staff, etc. (Later projections will be more refined, especially when projected team standings come into play.) So you could be right that swapping in a Keuchel will change the number of defensive opportunities and could produce some slight shifts in the numbers. But I think the emphasis would be on "slight". Keep in mind that even as a durable SP, Keuchel still throws a relatively small percentage of his team's innings (less than 14%), he still gets quite a few Ks and flyballs (just less than average), and the White Sox actually converted ground balls to left field into outs at a league average rate last year, even with those below-average DRS figures. If the negative effect is primarily errors, note that error rates are pretty low, and it might be offset a little by an increase in double plays. Plus, remember that DRS is on a run level -- it takes about 10 DRS to equal 1 win (or 1 WAR). So even something like a -2 DRS change might look bad on the DRS scale, but it barely registers on the win/WAR scale.

Agreed. Although pitchers in this class may not prioritize signing with a contender either -- they might actually want the longer leash afforded by a less competitive team. So even two at the level of Walker and Wood might be hard to get, if they are truly in demand.

I don't think anyone is claiming they are precise, definitive numbers, but most real-life trades have corresponded pretty well with the values on baseballtradevalues.com. They've even published some analysis about that: https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trade-tracker-winter-meeting-edition/ https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trade-deadline-post-mortem-what-worked-what-didnt/ Is OPS a "new number"? It's just OBP plus SLG. Rosario had a .805 OPS last season; the combined performance of every MLB left fielder last season resulted in a .789 OPS. Do you think that the Marlins would trade for Rosario with the expectation that he will drive in 109 runs for them in 2020? Keep in mind the difference between the Twins and Marlins offenses (2nd most runs scored vs. 2nd fewest). Keep in mind that Rosario himself had never even eclipsed 78 RBI in any of his 4 seasons prior to 2019. Also note that the Marlins already have a LF (Harold Ramirez) who just posted a slightly better OPS at age 24 than Rosario did at the same age, for about 6% of the Rosario's projected 2020 salary. Do you think the Marlins or any other team will ignore those factors when deciding upon Rosario's trade value? If not, I don't know why you'd expect baseballtradevalues.com to ignore them. FWIW, I don't expect Rosario to be traded, but I'm not sure it's because the Twins FO values him more than baseballtradevalues.com (because even then, if the Twins were really shopping him, you'd also have to conclude no other team shared their high valuation, so who's right?). I suspect it will simply be because we're not really sellers, and have a specific return in mind, and limited potential trade partners interested in Rosario's specific position/control/salary.

Call it sample or result, but you are claiming there are only 2 single team seasons in 20 years that can serve as a blueprint for Twins success. If that was true, then there is no meaningful blueprint. Falvey and Levine aren't limited by the 2005 White Sox or 2015 Royals (minimizing Cueto), just as the Twins ownership wasn't limited in hiring its current FO from those two teams. It's just trivia/noise, with the effect of derailing 2019 Twins discussion rather than advancing it. You were not responding to a specific post, and you addressed your post to "many here". Remember this is a discussion forum, not a personal soapbox. If you disagree with a specific post, and you feel you must reply, reply specifically to that post, and keep it focused and polite. Or you can choose to ignore it (an often under-rated option!). But please don't add more noise to the rest of the discussion. And as always, if you feel a post violates the site comment policy, please report it rather than responding: http://twinsdaily.com/topic/8228-twins-daily-comment-policy/