Jump to content
Twins Daily
  • Create Account

Otto von Ballpark

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    20,662

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    74

 Content Type 

Profiles

News

Minnesota Twins Videos

2026 Minnesota Twins Top Prospects Ranking

2022 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

Minnesota Twins Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

Guides & Resources

2023 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

The Minnesota Twins Players Project

2024 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

2025 Minnesota Twins Draft Pick Tracker

Forums

Blogs

Events

Store

Downloads

Gallery

Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Okay, take that list and remove Ervin for the first month or two, and probably even Trevor May too. (And keep in mind, Trevor May hasn't started a game in over 2 years.) And Duffey hasn't started a game in over a year, and only threw 71 innings last year. And of course Hughes is a huge wildcard. Our season ending SP situation last year was shaky, and to lose Colon, have an injury to Ervin, and do nothing else? That's borderline irresponsible for a team with our offense (and even our mild pen upgrades) and contention expectations. This isn't 2013 anymore.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    That's fair, but if you have to do 4/60 to land Cobb, maybe you'd rather do 1/10 (with a team option) for Garcia, especially if you believe in prospects arriving sooner rather than later.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Yup. Once the season starts, you can't count on any external replacements being available until at least June, and they might be Bartolo-level cooked. Or late July for another Garcia type.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    Only 30% of his starts last year were with the Yankees. You might as well as assert that 2 below average months mean that a player can't be average for a whole season. Since you brought up RAA, Garcia is +18 for his career. You note that his 2015 was quite good at +24, but even taking that out, -6 runs over the other 144 starts is pretty much the definition of average. I really don't get your insistence on immediately throwing guys into the fire with virtually zero AAA experience (and not even elite prospects at that). Because Brad Radke did it for a 99 loss team 23 years ago? If Garcia is as bad as you say he is, he can easily be replaced by prospects during the course of a 1 year deal. If the prospects struggle, you may not have the luxury of finding a veteran replacement during the season exactly when you want, at exactly your desired price. Not to mention the risks of pushing the prospects, if you give them too many challenges at once, it is probably not good for their overall development -- you don't just push every promising 12 year old to med school like Doogie Howser. And of course the heightened injury risk -- Fernando Romero's performance was showing obvious signs of fatigue after about 110 IP last year, and this is a guy you want to skip AAA?
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Actually Garcia was not "replacement level" last year -- he was average, which has value and could be an improvement.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    FWIW, Levine apparently reiterated the "priority" line a few week later than the November article I recalled. Molitor's quote from the same December article is a little more telling, though: https://amp.mlb.com/263716888-twins-serious-about-signing-yu-darvish.amp.html That doesn't sound too aggressive -- that sounds more like what I say when I hang around bake sales, hoping someone gives me a tray of unsold muffins at the end.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    I think the context is, from the non-financial perspective of a player. No one is doubting the Rangers have more money, but assuming the Twins and Rangers put up comparable offers for a player, there's not really a "big market" argument for a player to prefer one over the other.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Assuming 4 starters in regular rotation, we'd need a 5th starter on April 11, 24, 29, and May 4. Basically "skipped" twice in that span, the first week and the third week (around the Puerto Rico trip). Depending on how they did it, they could skip them on their next off day May 9th too, but you would need them by May 14th again. The DL is only 10 days now, so that helps, but I don't see them pushing Berrios, Mejia, etc. Early last season they were skipping the 5th guy a bit (Mejia?) but the other 4 spots were veterans (Ervin, Santiago, Hughes, and Gibson).
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    He did say "not in terms of population". I think it's very fair to say the Rangers are not on the overall "big market" level as LA, NY, Boston, and Chicago.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    Hey, you're talking about me! To me, "our first choice" to describe the consensus top FA kinda goes without saying, no? Especially in a market where nobody expected him to get $200 mil, or even $175 mil. Maybe I wouldn't have expected TR to say it, or the GM of a 100 loss team, but the 2017-2018 Twins absolutely can and should be considering every FA up to that range. They shouldn't have to signal that they are simply evaluating the opportunity. In retrospect, it certainly seems like your interpretation is correct, but even then, the outcome still seems disappointing because that means they didn't recognize the unique opportunity that Darvish and this market represented, etc. Maybe they'll blow us away with an impressive plan B, but at this point my feelings about that are probably similar to their's about Darvish -- it's more "hope" than expectation.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    And a $110 mil outlay won Darvish's services back in 2011 too! Coincidence? I think so!
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    I think the TD writers like them in context as prospects, but I'm not sure they've advocated for their immediate promotion to the majors. Perhaps they argued for a faster promotion to AAA last year, particularly for Gonsalves, but in absence of that I don't think they'd recommend essentially skipping AAA altogether based on spring training performance.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Not sure if that is really true. Their only April off days are the first week and around the Puerto Rico trip. They don't have one in May until May 9th either. That's 9 straight days, then 19 straight days. And even if you skip the 5th starter once or twice, you're not doing it to get more starts for a vet like Ervin Santana like we did last year. You are increasing the workload on guys like Berrios, Mejia, Duffey, etc. I'd count on needing 5 starters the whole time.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    Did you find it and read it? Because we seem to be on very different wavelengths in this thread, so I wouldn't judge my overall argument based on whatever it is you think I am saying here. I don't think Levine is a lying liar, or their offer was purely for show, or anything else like that, if that is what you think. I just don't think their offer was nearly as effective as it could have been, even within reasonable parameters of a midmarket team (although obviously the Twins are applying more restrictive parameters). That's not unreasonable, is it?
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Whoa! By late, I meant presumably final. It was almost spring training. If they had offered 5/100 back in December with the intention of negotiating upward, that's one thing. But as a last best offer, it definitely feels like a Hail Mary. I am not sure if I have impugned their motives at all. I agree that they had a value line and stuck to it. I just think it was never really compatible with calling the player a priority. Getting a bargain along their value line was the priority, and the player was more of a hope/prayer kind of thing. Looking back, it seems Levine meant priority in a "we'll look at him first" way, but it is disappointing because that should really go without saying, and the opportunity to play at the top of the market seemed ripe.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    I've posted some elaborate explanations in other threads, but basically, even with rather favorable market conditions, the Twins best/final offer only had about a 5-10% chance of success.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    In what ways was the "priority" statement sincere? Making a late (and presumably final) offer of fewer years and ~30% less guaranteed money than every common public forecast is clearly a prioritization of a bargain, not a player. I think it was an ill-advised word choice it and of itself.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Your own admission at least has plugged-in sources, so it's probably "whole assed" speculation rather than the "half assed" speculation common at TD. The Twins offering the same guarantee as the Cubs but with a larger AAV is pretty implausible. Especially given the collusion accusation climate, it's virtually impossible that wouldn't have leaked. The Twins are welcome to correct the record on this front, of course. I don't think there is any official restriction on disclosing a rejected offer once a player signs elsewhere (or if there is, it could be done unofficially quite easily too). But until they do so, I'm not going to give them credit as if their offer was secretly 25% larger than any reported number. (I've actually been giving them credit for +10% but frankly maybe even that is too much -- +5% would be the same AAV as the Cubs deal and might be the more likely figure.)
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Here's Darvish's MLB IP ranks, outside of his single TJ injury/surgery: 2012: 42nd (1st MLB season, they skipped him 3 times) 2013: 20th 2014 1st half: 51st (they skipped him 2 times) 2016 2nd half: 36th 2017: 24th And his durability in Japan has also been referenced as evidence that he might have too much "mileage" on his arm already.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    His two partial seasons are related to the TJ surgery too. If a player goes down with an elbow problem in August, has surgery the following March following unsuccessful rest/rehab, then returns 15-16 months later as is customary, you don't count that as 3 separate durability concerns, do you?
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    By your own admission, they had little hope of him accepting that offer. How do we even know the Archer offer was any different? A football team can't just point to a Hail Mary play as evidence their game plan properly leverages throwing deep downfield.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    C'mon Nick, folding his standard TJ recovery time into the average to dismiss his durability? By that criteria, Cobb averages 11 starts over the last 3 seasons, 15 over the last 4, and Lynn averages only 21 over the last 3 too.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    They have? Gonsalves has 22 IP at AAA, and he gave up 14 runs. Romero has yet to throw a pitch in AAA, and had a 3.53 ERA in AA where the league ERA was 3.60.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    Name some SP that you expect to be available at the trade deadline in 2018. Not all trade deadlines are created equal -- remember 2016 when Hector Santiago was one of the leading arms available? And even in 2017 when there were 4 notable SP available, I think you are dramatically underrating the difficulty of acquiring them. Look where they wound up: Dodgers, Yankees, Cubs, Astros. Doesn't look much different from FA negotiations, does it? Verlander's no-trade clause played a big role too, limiting his potential landing spots as much as any choosy FA.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    But when you turn around and say that contact "would be unprecedented in the franchise's history", when you know it's a lost cause, isn't that a bit more of "selling hope", in a disingenuous way?
×
×
  • Create New...