Otto von Ballpark

Presumably if they were right and Dozier continued hitting at a high level, the market would adjust and value him accordingly. So we could trade him then if we wanted. An extension would be another determination that would need to be made. Do they peg him to age like Kinsler, Zobrist, etc.? I don't endorse it, but that's Brock's point. It is internally consistent.

Top 10 pitching prospect means among the top 10 pitchers. Not top 10 overall. (Although Sickels had him there briefly too.)

Apparently a vesting option for 2018 too. We could have flipped him at the deadline, or better yet, had him available to package with Dozier or Santana at the deadline...

The Astros have been adding talent too, so I'm not sure what the complete ledger looks like. They've definitely been active.

I think we'd all love that, but it's not too likely. The Astros got 5 years of Ken Giles, at least 2 at league minimum salary. And it's risky to wait for that kind of return when you only control the asset for 2 more years like the Twins and Dozier.

I heard the Twins Daily plug over there, so I am sure you want to make everyone listen. But the 3 guys Doogie mentions are Mike Napoli, Greg Holland, and Joe Smith. Hopefully they're looking at Holland a lot more than Napoli...

That's fine, and that speaks to the inactivity of trades. But how about cutting some of these guys that no one else wants? How about dropping out some fungible 40-man parts and replacing them with more interesting projects?

Personally, I'd be disappointed if that's the case. It's not like they have to be overly worried about the on-field product to just identify an interesting reliever project or something. Still may come yet this offseason, but so far... bare minimum.

That's fair Brock, although given the Twins inactive offseason overall, it would appear Falvey and Levine have similar confidence in many parts of the current roster that probably isn't warranted.

Thanks for the response. No, I don't think it makes the Dodgers "horribly incompetent". Even if they preferred Dozier to Forsythe, they perhaps don't project a huge difference. I think "best offers" are withheld all the time, because there are risks to making them. Once you offer a guy, it's incredibly bad form to pull him back or try to change it. Maybe the Dodgers would have been ultimately willing to pull the trigger on De Leon plus Stewart, but making that offer when the Twins were steadfast in demanding 3 players (per Morosi) would have effectively ended any chance of settling on their preferred package of De Leon plus, say, Calhoun, and it still wouldn't have gotten the deal done. Even offering "one of" Stewart or Calhoun as the second piece would have probably just emboldened the Twins to demand all 3. Not to mention the trickle down effects -- if the Rays know the Twins turned down De Leon plus Stewart or Calhoun, they are more likely to try to squeeze those players into their demand too. Or if the Dodgers don't acquire Forsythe and they re-visit the Twins later, the Dodgers earlier offer might become the "starting point" regardless of how circumstances may have changed since then. I'm not saying this is exactly what happened, but these are examples of reasonable possibilities that could have led to only De Leon being on the table. Real-world negotiations with multiple moving parts aren't just an isolated math problem, where one side says X and they other says Y, and if they are near equal, the deal happens, and if they're not, the page is erased. It's a lot more complicated than that. And to re-iterate, I'm not picking on the Twins too much here, I think it's fine to walk away because of your high demands for Dozier -- that's what many folks here endorse, and that's likely what the Twins did. I just don't think you get to further justify your walking away because the Dodgers "only" put De Leon on the table, when it was only done in the face of much higher demands.

Let me try again. I don't fault the Twins for making an initial high demand. My issue is that there's no evidence they backed down from that demand in any meaningful way, even as they saw those demands generating very little activity with the Dodgers or other clubs. Which is again fine if you are extra skeptical of De Leon (and the Twins might have been), or if you really peg Dozier at high value (which again the Twins very well do), and you don't mind passing up the Dodgers as a potential partner and kicking this can down the road. But I don't think you get to endorse that skepticism and those high demands, and then further justify a deal not getting done because the Dodgers only put De Leon on the table. The latter is a product of the former. You can't blame the Dodgers for not putting a second name like Stewart on the table if it wasn't going to get the deal done anyway, it would only hurt their future bargaining position. Hopefully it's clear that I'm not being too critical of the Twins here, like perhaps other posters are. At worst, I am a little disappointed that they didn't lower their demands a bit to generate more interest at what might be Dozier's peak value point. At best, even if one endorses their high demands, I think the Twins strategy was inelegant (the gambit of leaking specious interest by other teams certainly didn't seem to help their Dodger situation). But as I've said on another thread, I think I am more disappointed that they haven't done anything this offseason at all. The bare minimum was to sign a catcher and make a Rule 5 pick, and that's pretty much all they have done. I get not forcing a Dozier trade -- but was there really nothing else they could manage with this roster?

I am happy to admit that the best "offer" on the table was essentially De Leon in a 1-for-1 type swap. My problem is, offers aren't produced independently in a vacuum -- they have a large dependence upon the requests and demands on the other side. The 1-for-1 result might have been just as much a function of the Twins high demands as it was the Dodgers being cheap. For example, we sort of know that once De Leon was initially agreed upon, the Twins still wanted one of Bellinger or Alvarez and talks stalled. Perhaps when talks picked up later, the Twins were willing to forgo Bellinger or Alvarez, but wanted two additional pieces (per Morosi) perhaps like Stewart and Lux. Again, from what we know, the Dodgers said no at this point, but it's unclear whether there was a legitimate opportunity for them to counteroffer, say, just De Leon plus Stewart. If that deal is still likely to be rejected, the Dodgers gain nothing from putting it out there, and it could actually hurt them -- it might put Stewart on the table where he is not easily retracted when they'd prefer a similar prospect like Calhoun in that place instead, etc. Might also set a precedent for other teams to ask for those players in trade too (I could see the Rays asking for De Leon plus Stewart for Forsythe if that was leaked to be on the table but rejected by the Twins, for example). Given how lifeless the talks seemed, and that Morosi was still reporting the "two additional players" demand yesterday, I don't think it's far-fetched to say that the Twins were probably never receptive to a De Leon plus Stewart or Calhoun type proposal, so I can't fault the Dodgers too much for not submitting such an offer. And I can't put too much credence in the ultimate "1-for-1 offer" that was on the table as being truly indicative of what the Dodgers may have been willing to give up, given a different approach/demands by the Twins.

Ditka.

But without examining why, there isn't any meaningful conclusion you can draw from those games played numbers. He was a utility player most of that time. Since he became a full timer, he missed a solid month in the middle of 2 years. Does that mean he's significantly more likely than another player to miss time going forward? I don't really think so, unless you know something special about the nature of that 30 day absence.

Forsythe missed a month last year, but he had 567 PA. I think it's crazy to cast that aside as "not a full season" unless there are some exceptional circumstances at play, but maybe I'm alone in that. He still trails Dozier in consecutive starter seasons (4 to 2) which is factor, but I don't know if it's fair to discount him any further on those grounds.

Forsythe has 2 pretty similar years, I'm not sure there's a "career year" standout in there. There's nothing in there boosting his numbers for those 2 years like Dozier's recent run. He's also not a year older, he's ~4 months older.

There's probably some truth to that too. They've made some bad deals independent of other teams (Yasmany Tomas), plus they were making bad deals before Stewart was even around (Eaton and Skaggs for Mark Trumbo!). Although I do wish the Twins had gotten in on the Arizona trade fest, at least more than Palka!

Generally agreed, although Stewart's moves in Arizona were pretty suspect when he made them. I don't know if we'll be able to conclude that we passed on a "bad deal" here for a little while yet, at least until we get some more data on De Leon, Dozier, Dozier's market, and in general, the Twins 2017-2018 performance.

While some have that pessimistic take on him, it seems most observers give De Leon a little more credit for ceiling than that.

That's just their 2016 numbers. Career vs LHP Dozier: 131 wRC+ Forsythe: 127 wRC+ Either way, it's a big improvement over Utley's 2016 mark of 27 wRC+ vs LHP. And the Dodgers don't need all of their improvement vs LHP to come from Forsythe. They will almost certainly be playing RHB Puig more (or acquiring another RHB outfielder), and I imagine they expect RHB Turner to return to his career norms vs LHP after an uncharacteristically poor split in 2016.

I think he means that the Dodgers offer of 2-3 players did not satisfy the Twins quality demands in their request for De Leon plus 2 prospects (per Passan).

Not sure why you'd say that, unless you are primarily looking at Forsythe's stats from 3+ years ago. He's got 7.6 bWAR and 6.8 fWAR over the last 2 seasons, I think we would be thrilled with that production from Polanco. If anything, Polanco is probably Forsythe-lite until he adds a little power to his game (which could certainly happen over the next few years), or shows a greater defensive aptitude like handling SS.

Well, it wasn't a report that the offer was in fact "junk". It was speculation based on some incomplete reports. If Adams knew anything about pieces offered beyond De Leon, he never published them. Also, this "junk" comment by Adams was in a chat or comments section, was it not? I just tried searching MLBTR proper for it with no results. That would push it further into the speculative category, IMO, and not something that should be suggested as a report.

A month on the DL last year and it is invalidated as a "full season"? Neat trick. Forsythe still had 567 PA last year. (Your career retrospective on Mauer should be interesting, dismissing 2009 as "not a full season" ) Forsythe and Dozier also have an equal number of qualifying seasons above a 104 OPS+. Per PA, Forsythe actually has more bWAR over the last 2 years than Dozier. Dozier has the advantage in fWAR rate over that same period. They are virtually the same age too, and both late bloomers. The big difference is that Dozier bloomed a little earlier, and then had the HR binge late last year. A big part of their difference going forward is in how one projects that HR binge. Steamer prefers Dozier by about 0.9 WAR next year given the same number of PA (I haven't had a chance to check ZIPS yet).

The extension removed a lot of our flexibility and options with Hughes. Without a long, solid history, you should almost always prefer a pitcher on a 2/16 deal (what he had left) over a 5/55 deal, especially a backloaded one (what we gave him with the extension). Under the pre-extension scenario, you seem to be worried about how much he will cost to retain if he continues performing well over the remaining two years, but you are ignoring the fact that he would have been an INCREDIBLY valuable trade piece under those circumstances, or fetched a valuable comp pick this winter. (Or, if we really wanted to retain him, he'd probably be worth the $75+ mil he'd command after 3 strong seasons.) Even with performance regression, he would have been a decent trade chip. With injury or a lot a performance regression, we would have had the inside track to re-sign him on a one-year bounceback deal like that of Tyson Ross. So there really was no "bad case" pre-extension, it was pure upside for the Twins. As it stands, the extension made it virtually impossible to trade him for several years. Even now, if he fulfills our hopes and returns to usefulness in 2017, he is probably not a trade asset for at least 2 years unless we eat cash. We really have to hope for 2-3 years of health and usefulness from him.