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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Never? If Antony said, we can send $13 mil with Nolasco and open his roster spot, or we can send $6.4 mil with him, take on an additional ~$8 mil in obligations for a different player, and send a prospect too perhaps valued at ~$5 mil, the Pohlads would gladly approve of one of those deals, but would never approve the other? I think we are letting our Nolasco hate obscure how close those deals are, in terms of financial impact.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think this is true. In practical terms, I have never seen an MLB team withhold cash sent to pay part of a player's salary in a future trade (and cash has been involved in a lot of deals). In technical terms, I think such a practice might throw off luxury tax calculations too? I think the money is tied to the player in the proportion decided by the teams.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    I think by "buyout more of", the poster meant pay more of Nolasco's salary in trade. We likely could have dumped him somewhere else by picking up ~$13 mil, by my estimation (at which point he'd basically be a flyer like Bud Norris circa last winter).
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    The Angels are paying Nolasco $8 mil next year. The Twins will likely pay Santiago about $8 mil if they tender him a contract this winter. To the teams they could hypothetically be traded to in the next year and a half, they carry virtually the exact same financial obligation. (I guess the Angels are also on the hook for Nolasco's $1 mil option buyout)
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    I was going by the Angels saying that Meyer's MRI was clean now, not trying to project it. Obviously his health could get worse, but if it's clean now, I think he's probably worth something approaching $5 mil. I'm really skeptical of any analysis that puts Busenitz on equal value footing with Meyer. If Meyer is down in those value depths, it's because of health concerns, which isn't really the same as not having the talent/pedigree. No one was going to buy Busenitz as a lotto ticket for anything close to $5 mil. I'm trying to be balanced, I'm not trying to do best case for the Angels and worst case for the Twins. But the fact is, the Twins don't really have a great best case. It would be hard for Santiago to pitch better than he already has, which is his realistic path to extra value. It would be hard to Busenitz to come completely out of nowhere. But on the other hand, it's not that hard for Nolasco to improve, nor is it necessarily that hard for Meyer to contribute if he can just stay healthy for a bit.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    You think the Angels made a major mistake with this trade? I'm not so sure they passed on significantly better offers for Santiago. And as bad as he's been, Nolasco has been eating innings as well as (or better than) Santiago this year. And his performance hasn't been that disastrous recently -- even without looking at FIP, he's got a 82 ERA+ this year, compared to, say, Edwin Jackson's 60 when the Cubs started to give up on him a couple years ago. Or even, Ubaldo Jimenez at 63 this year. Kevin Correia had an 81 ERA+ in 5 seasons starting when we signed him for 2/10. It's a serviceable level, even before you look at any potential to get better (FIP and change of scenery).
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    I too am surprised that Nolasco was dealt at all, but given the parameters of this deal, maybe we shouldn't be that surprised. Nolasco had $17 million remaining on his deal; I didn't think he'd really have to be released for nothing, since he was healthy and at least eating innings, some other team would kick in at least a few million to take a flyer on him. My ready example has been Bud Norris' $2.5 mil contract this past winter, and Nolasco was eating innings better than Norris circa 2015, and any team acquiring him in 2016 would get a bit of a head start at trying to fix him too, so maybe we could bump that up to $4 mil if we wanted to dump Nolasco now for pure salary relief. Well, we actually dumped him on the Angels for $9 mil salary relief. We also got the chance to offer Santiago arbitration, but that might actually reduce our return, if Santiago's trade value doesn't increase or if he's not fully worth his ~$8 mil final arbitration award (if he's a potential nontender, and Joe Saunders circa 2011 is a decent nontender comp, that could be the case). So about a difference of $5 mil over what we could have reasonably been expected to get for Nolasco as a pure salary dump. Setting aside Busenitz (who looks mostly like a depth piece), that could mean we effectively sold Meyer for about $5 mil, which is probably the going rate for a prospect even of his present suspect caliber. Arizona sold Touki Toussaint for about $10 mil last year; Pittsburgh kinda sold McGuire and another iffy prospect for ~$15 mil in salary relief (Liriano's remaining guarantee, minus what Hutchison should make in arb). If Meyer's MRI was clean, he was probably worth $5 mil to try to put something together through his final option year. So maybe we shouldn't be so surprised? (Just spitballing here, not trying to be fastidious and pernickety!)
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    That trend line has been going steady for 2.5 years. I don't think another year will push their values that much further apart (especially if you neutralize their salaries, which the Twins did by including cash in this deal).
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    I didn't think it was belabored to respond when you wrote that Santiago is "likely to fetch far more value than Nolasco". That just doesn't seem true given the information we have, even if the rest of the deal's benefits are a net win. And your same post didn't just say the deal was a "net win" but rather a "coup". I even quoted that section of your post, which I thought made clear that I was disagreeing with the words and content in that section of your post, not some other different/general conclusions around the topic. I'll drop it now, although I'd appreciate if you'd ask for clarification next time you think I am inferring something as silly as Nolasco having more value, rather than immediately adopting a mocking tone toward a point I likely am not making.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    Although I'm still not exactly sure what else we could get this offseason for an extra $8-9 mil, or an extra $15-16 mil if you non-tender Plouffe too.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    And Hughes, who started as more of a bounce back type but we too quickly tore it up to go in between.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    You might be right. At first it seemed like an aggressive non-tender barring injury or collapse. But I did find a non-tender comparable -- Joe Saunders after 2011. And we just saw that Santiago didn't fetch a lot at the trade deadline. The non-tender and $8 mil savings strategy does seem like a more likely path to Twins benefit than Santiago's value increasing over the next year. (Actually, I guess it could be $9 mil savings, since the Angels are apparently on the hook for Nolasco's $1 mil buyout for 2018.)
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    I've saved paper tickets too (for the benefit of my future biographers charting my whereabouts), but I love the digital ones for convenience. Buying/selling physical paper tickets is no fun. They can and do print you a paper receipt for your digital ticket at Target Field -- this is what you show the ushers when you want access to your section. (At least, that's what happened when I had a digital ticket for a nice seating area, I can't remember if I got a paper receipt for the cheap seats.) It wasn't a very nice looking receipt, however! If you have kids, and you want them to feel involved by handing over a paper ticket on entry, you could probably just have their digital ticket scanned on your phone, and tell the ticket-taker to pretend to scan/check whatever paper ticket you gave to the kid too (maybe an old one, or one you print yourself). Bonus: you can give the ticket to the kid far in advance, with no fear of the kid losing it!
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    No, I am not suggesting that. But evidence suggests that Nolasco plus a few million dollars will probably generate a roughly equal return to Santiago, which is in direct contraction to this statement of yours: I think it's a decent trade for the Twins, just to move on from Nolasco and clear a 40-man roster spot (although Busenitz will be Rule 5 eligible if not added this winter), but clearly here you are trying to assign it bonus points for Santiago's future value which isn't at all clear. Any time you think about assigning a player future trade value that's well above what he was just traded for, I think that deserves a note of caution. I remember reading similar opinions on this site of the Fuld-Milone swap, among others, which was also a solid trade by the Twins because we needed Milone more than Fuld at that time. But there was no great future value to Milone, even when he matched his career high with a 104 ERA+ the following season. (At least Milone offered two more years of potential control, should he have somehow developed more value.) Often the assumption of future value comes along with the stated or implied conclusion that one GM just made a huge mistake, which sometimes happens, but not nearly as often as claimed. Most MLB trades are pretty good proxies for near future value, particularly when they don't involve talent/potential extremes (i.e. star-level players or top prospects). I hope you don't mind that we have discussions that aren't simple binary "good vs bad" trade -- I think the more interesting aspects of these transactions are often the nuances.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    It is pretty clear that Meyer had some value, to make the trade happen at all. Also not clear that Santiago can get flipped next year for more. I think this trade suggests his value isn't that high even when he is successful, and is likely to go down as his salary increases and he gets even closer to FA next year (especially if his performance slips at all next year). Agreed that we didn't have great assets to deal, so I too am generally satisfied with the deadline.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Yes, that is correct. That is the procedure for establishing priority in trade assignment (August) waivers, so NL teams probably wouldn't be awarded a claim on Suzuki,
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    $6.4 million. We are paying Nolasco's remaining salary for 2016 ($2.4 mil more than Santiago's), plus $4 mil for 2017. Not a huge difference, but there seems to be some confusion on the matter.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Little known factoid: the original title of the book "Moneyball" was "Dollars to Donuts." Or should that be "Donuts to Dollars"?
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Interesting. Now I'm curious what DEF is, I assumed it was basically just UZR plus a positional adjustment (which should be roughly the same for all the teams in the AL), but now I'm not so sure. UZR is already the sum of ARM, DPR, RngR, and ErrR so I'm not sure why the Angels UZR gets a 10 run boost to DEF, while the Twins UZR gets a 23 run demerit to DEF. In any case, defense as measured by the metrics doesn't seem to explain much of Nolasco's ERA-FIP discrepancy.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    That's fair, I just thought "significant portion" was a little strong.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Repeating the exercise for his Marlins career (I'll ignore 2013 as it was split between Miami and LA).... 2006-2012 Marlins: -139 UZR, -313 (!) DRS 2006-2012 Nolasco pitched 11% of the Marlins innings His "share" of the larger DRS under-performance would have been 35 runs, dropping his ERA from 4.49 to 4.21. By UZR, it's only 15 runs, dropping his ERA from 4.49 to 4.37. His FIP in those years was 3.83.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    I like to see new guys in general, and it's fairly clear that Nolasco would never "click" here, so I share this sentiment.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Not sure where you get 150 in that range. I see a 107 run difference since the start of 2014 by both DRS and UZR: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2016&month=0&season1=2014&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=21,d Nolasco has pitched 8.4% of the Twins innings since 2014. His proportional share of the DRS/UZR deficit would be about 9 runs. That would drop his Twins ERA from 5.44 to 5.19. His Twins FIP is 4.20. I don't think your conclusion is "safe" at all.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    I think it's a fair deal, but "potential mid rotation starter" is probably a little too vague to be useful. Was Tommy Milone a "potential mid rotation starter" this past winter? Evidence suggests he and Santiago aren't too different in terms of performance. Packaging Nolasco and Meyer for a slightly more expensive Milone with less team control sounds a little less nice than your phrasing!
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    True, although I think teams also try to be fairly selective about what guys it puts on August waivers. For example, the Twins aren't going to put Buxton or Sano on waivers, or probably even Tonkin or Rogers. Suzuki and Kintzler may not be in that class, but if we try to put them through waivers when they are performing well and offer affordable 2017 control, we might be pushing that boundary a bit, so I don't think it would be out of the question for a non-contender to put in a claim without fear of retaliation. It wouldn't necessarily be about blocking at that point. If they were both pending FA, or had a mildly prohibitive 2017 price tag, it would be a different story.
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