Otto von Ballpark

Here's the article with the Epstein quote: http://mobil.totalfitness4you.com/big-man-big-personality-the-oral-history-of-david-ortizs-mlb-adventure The rest of the quote sheds some light on why it took a month to sign him. Ortiz was playing in the Dominican that winter, and the team ran him through several workouts down there. And it suggests that his relationship with Boston coaches and teammates was a important factor in landing him.

The Twins signed Chris Gomez for $500k a few weeks later to be the BACKUP utility infielder (they were already paying Denny Hocking a cool million). The league minimum was about $300k. The difference between Ortiz's arbitration value and his "true market value" was something like Chris Gomez, or two league-minimum salaries. Another way to look at it, even after getting released, Ortiz still got a $300k raise over 2002. You are assuming a lot of things here. Epstein actually later said he talked with TR about trading for Ortiz but the asking price was quite high.

Also, it is commonly mentioned that the Twins non tendered Ortiz, but I actually think he was released. See this contemporary news report of the transaction: http://www.keloland.com/news/article/other/twins-release-ortiz Non-tendered players don't have to pass through waivers. Which is an important distinction, because a non tendered player can be re-signed by his former club at any salary the two sides can agree on. A released player can do the same, BUT he couldn't be added back to the team's 40-man roster before May 15th. So the Twins burned a huge bridge there. This wasn't about money (the Twins had $2 mil in their pocket to sign Kenny Rogers after the Milton injury anyway), this was about kicking Ortiz to the curb.

Unfortunately, you too are missing some context around the move. Ortiz wasn't being offered to other club in trade in a vacuum -- it was no secret that Twins management didn't see eye to eye with Ortiz, the same management was enamored with Mientkiewicz, and LeCroy was out of options and had no defensive position to play. Trading for Ortiz under those circumstances would have been foolish. As an analogy, think about Plouffe this past winter. If the Twins offered him in trade, with Sano, Park, and Mauer all on the team, other teams would have been foolish to give the Twins anything of value for him. If the Twins had taken a different route and released Plouffe, and a contending team picked him up for ~$5 mil, would that have justified the Twins move?

He "sat around for a month" including the holidays, and he was likely out of the country at the time making signing with a new club a little more difficult, and he was released about halfway through the offseason after most teams had made their early moves and now had to be more judicious about their roster choices. It's quite possible he could have signed earlier, if he really wanted to or was worried about it, but chose to wait it out for a month, which seems perfectly reasonable. For all we know, he was immediately contacted by a few clubs with guaranteed offers, and thus was able to take his time to consider the best fit, which turned out to be a consistent big market contender willing to give him a decent shot. He also signed for more than you indicate, $1.25 million, and my unscientific arbitration estimate would have put him at $1.9 mil (same service time and very similar numbers to Jeremy Giambi, who was $115k ahead of him in arbitration the previous winter and signed for $2 mil for 2003). That's a discount, but it's not huge. It's also possible that a lousy team was willing to give him closer to his arbitration salary but he chose Boston's offer instead, especially if his Twins experience made him put a higher priority on a good relationship with management. (And Boston had a good hitter's park and a good record with hitters at that time too.) As for him signing to "share time with Giambi" for a couple months -- no, that's not accurate either. In 2002, the Red Sox had a gaping void at both 1B (Tony Clark, 47 OPS+) and DH (Carlos Baerga, 82 OPS+). Giambi and Ortiz were both on track to be full-time starters if healthy until the Boston was able to score Kevin Millar around the start of spring training, which necessitated a creative playing time adjustment for numerous players including Ortiz. I'm not saying Ortiz was a hot commodity around the league -- obviously given the general circumstances he was in, he wasn't. But he wasn't quite as valueless as a lot of retrospectives would have you think. The fact that he got a guaranteed deal, for as much as did, where he did (a starting job or close to it on a strong, respected Boston club), immediately casts doubt on the Twins assertion that he was less valuable than potential backup utility infielders Jose Morban and Chris Gomez (both added to the 40-man roster in the month after Ortiz's release). It was immediately a bad decision, no hindsight required, although obviously Ortiz's career unfolded more favorably than even Boston could have anticipated.

I too would have liked to see him in AAA a little longer, but as a fan, I am excited to see his return and I hope he can stick this time! Honestly, if he is comfortable and confident enough at the plate to not K 50% of the time anymore, he can probably start making his adjustments at the MLB level.

Released Dec. 16, signed Jan. 22. This idea that he went unsigned an excessively long time should be put to rest. Also, he was on a 360 PA season pace through May, so he was getting a decent opportunity even before he warmed up in June and secured a permanent starting gig.

Not seeing it. At most, cutting Ortiz saved $2 mil -- but we had $2 mil in the budget at the end of spring training to add Kenny Rogers after Milton went down (shuffling Johan to the pen for a few more months). There was no imperative to shed that money in December. (And even if there was, there were plenty of other places to shave the 2003 and beyond budgets if necessary. Heck, Mientkiewicz was already almost out earning Ortiz, and was coming off a worse season too and more likely to be ousted by a better prospect in Morneau, because they probably wouldn't want Morneau to DH full time and Doug's bat wouldn't play there either.)

How many times have the Twins held on to guys providing negative value, just because they didn't want to cut them for nothing? How many times have they held onto guys, because younger and less experienced options weren't fully ready yet? Moreover, what is most important for a competitive small market team is not saving money, but maximizing assets. The Twins cut Ortiz when he was due to make no more than $2 mil, and the market valued him at $1.25 mil. Net, we saved no more than $750k, barely twice the minimum salary at the time. Meanwhile, Mientkiewicz was coming off a pretty mediocre season in 2002, LeCroy had done very little in MLB and was quite possibly less useful than Ortiz for platoon reasons, and Morneau was still 1.5 years from arriving in MLB to stay. No, it made no sense to drop Ortiz at that moment from a baseball or business perspective. That is what was most troubling about the Ortiz situation. The decision to cut him at that moment appears to have been made with other considerations primarily in mind, whether personal, cultural, etc.

Not quite true. He was barely a FA for a month, and I believe that included the holidays. He signed a guaranteed major league deal with a very competitive club in mid-January. It wasn't fully what he would have made in arbitration, but it was close enough to almost immediately cast doubt on the Twins decision.

"A ton of sense"? Not really. We got nothing in return for him. We saved no more than $2 million, coming off a season where we paid Bob Wells $1.7 million, and in the midst of a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract for Denny Hocking... Sure, there were still questions about his future, no doubt, but that doesn't mean you cut him at that point for nothing. In the second half of 2002, Ortiz was one of the top 30 hitters in baseball: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2002&month=31&season1=2002&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=17,d

Both started in business/marketing, both have been here forever, and both got promoted together in 2007 when TR stepped down and the franchise started to go off the rails. Which is also a key piece of evidence against Antony -- he was the #2 in charge while the franchise fell apart (and he has remained #2 in charge during a long slow rebuild). Even if Antony was a more passive #2 during that time, that doesn't bode well for him as a potential GM -- knowing who to say "no" to, and how to effectively communicate that, are huge skills for a GM. And even among Antony's known responsibilities like "negotiating player contracts", the Twins haven't exactly demonstrated much success or innovation in that area during Antony's years of service. I have nothing against Antony personally, and I am sure he performs the duties of his job just fine, but the idea that he could be a viable MLB GM is exactly the kind of mindset that produced Bill Smith among a host of other issues.

I don't think anyone is asking Seth to say bad things about these people. But there is a difference between saying "Antony is fine at his job" and saying "Antony is a fine MLB GM candidate" -- the former is pretty reasonable (given his likely limited duties, and our limited knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes), while the latter suggests someone who isn't even interested in looking at the situation critically.

So you admit Bill Smith was bad as a GM, but you are on record elsewhere saying Rob Antony is a good GM candidate? I mean, I understand defending these guys personally, and believing they are capable in their current limited roles, but this seems like a willful ignorance of history, or any kind of critical examination of how promotions and assignments (and probably a whole host of other decisions) happen in this front office.

It does seem like the Twins did their latest TV deal at the worst possible time (just before a TV deal explosion, and apparently for a fairly long term without an opt-out, as far as I have been able to tell). It wouldn't be the first time the Twins front office failed to anticipate a trend and quickly fell behind. I mean, if someone says that the Twins should have one of those crazy billion-dollar TV megadeals, sure, that's off-base, the local market wouldn't support that. But nobody said that here. All that was said/implied was that the Twins are probably not optimizing their TV revenue. Of which there is plenty of evidence (the timing of their current deal, their past poor handling of Victory Sports, etc.).

Really? I enjoy baseball just about anywhere, but there doesn't seem to be anything particularly special about Target Field that should earn the Twins or St. Peter special credit. They were basically handed a golden goose, on many levels. And it seems every "upgrade" to the stadium has been related to exclusive seating areas and alcohol sales -- which I am sure is profitable, but doesn't involve a whole lot of creativity. (Indeed, Target Field is generally considered one of the least kid/family friendly stadiums in MLB.)

It used to be 12 months, so a drafted player couldn't be traded until the following June. They cut that roughly in half with the current rule. Obviously immediately trading a selection is effectively trading picks, and they seem resistant to that, although the "competitive balance lottery" picks can be traded with some limitations. (Looks like the Twins have such a pick after the second round again, as they did the previous two years.)

You keep repeating this, but no evidence supports it. TR came back to rebuild, so 2012 was the first year of that. True, he didn't make a ton of moves that year -- but TR rarely makes a bunch of moves! Especially when he had no one worth trading, and not a lot of youngsters worth promoting. It was still year 1 of the rebuild, it's just that most other GMs probably would have approached it more aggressively than TR.

In 2012-2013, Mauer was still a star level performer, and Morneau still had a 107 OPS+ to finish out his contract. Meanwhile, our opening day payroll dropped by about $20 mil both years. And back to the topic at hand, even if accept some financial limitations, that doesn't mean you can't grade TR on the money he has spent. And most of his spending has been uniformly poor.

Great post, Willihammer (and hopefully ties this Hughes tangent back into the thread topic -- those are a few qualities we might like to avoid in a GM).

I disagree that his current contract is "easily tradeable" even if Hughes didn't fall flat on his face. How many pitchers have been traded with similar commitments remaining? And for what return? Meanwhile, the list of pitchers traded with 0.5-1.5 years remaining, for solid returns, is quite long. Not that it would have been impossible to trade Hughes after his extension, but he ceased to be a valuable trade asset when we signed it. At best, we pushed the most favorable trade opportunities down the road 3+ years.

In short, the original Hughes deal offered a ton of utility. It wouldn't take much to be worth 3/24 as a starter, or even a reliever if necessary. And basically every offseason and trade deadline, we would have had the option of trading him (either as a starter or a reliever) if we weren't competitive, fetching a good return from another team looking for a short-term solution. Once we signed the extension, though, Hughes became almost impossible to trade for a good return, or send to the bullpen. His contract was no longer pure short-term solution -- it also contained a long-term liability, which would scare off a lot of trade partners, or at least lower potential returns as compared to the same player on a shorter, cheaper deal. Even if Hughes was great, if the team sucked, we couldn't really capitalize on his performance anymore.

Those "options" are at best incomplete. If Hughes had a second good season, the surplus value on his first two seasons in Minnesota would have been great, and his trade value with 1 year, $8 mil remaining could have been through the roof -- look at what Samardzija fetched in trade (twice), Cueto at the deadline, etc. If he played out his contract and was set to command $100 mil as a free agent, we would have gotten incredible value out of his original deal, had numerous opportunities to shop him in trade if we weren't competitive otherwise, and at least collected a comp pick when he left. We basically flushed away all of the potential surplus value of his original deal, just so we could control him for 5 more years (at significantly higher salaries) instead of 2 more. I liked it at the time, but looking back, it was a pretty bad decision, even without the knowledge of Hughes' performance since. It doesn't really matter if Hughes had repeated his 2014 season in 2015-2016 after signing the extension -- any benefits to our competitiveness those seasons would have been the same under the original contract. And his trade value, with 3/39 remaining on his deal, would have been notably worse than with 2/16, 1/8, or 0.5/4 remaining, if we tried to trade him under the original deal. And of course, even if Hughes repeated 2014 once or twice more, it is doubtful the Twins would have been unable to afford him, had they wanted to. I already pointed out upthread that the very month the Twins extended Hughes, they committed $97 million for 7 pitcher seasons. They absolutely could have afforded a 5 year, $100-110 million deal for a single pitcher if they wanted.

Milone averaged fewer IP/GS in 2016 MLB than Duffey, Santana, Nolasco, Hughes, and Gibson. He trailed all of those pitchers in the same category for 2015 too, except the hobbled Nolasco. His 2015 IP/GS mark was virtually the same as notably poor innings-eater Mike Pelfrey, and just a hair ahead of bullpen-bound Trevor May. Milone's IP/GS has dropped each year of his career since his rookie season in Oakland. His career mark is lower than even Nolasco's poor 2014 season. I'd guess there are probably other directions the Twins could go in 2016 for similar "innings eating" performance that are more useful for a club in our position. (And if they involve pitchers with options, like Dean, May, Rogers, Darnell, Wheeler, Berrios, Meyer, etc., that is even better, because those pitchers have the flexibility to be optioned out for an extra reliever as needed -- something we can't do with Milone.)

Milone's salary this year is only $4.5 mil. At the time he was waived, he had roughly ~$3.75 mil remaining. If he was really a league-average starter, I have to think multiple teams would have claimed him at that price.