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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    For reference, here is Seth's longest-tenured list from last spring: http://twinsdaily.com/articles.html/_/minnesota-twins-news/minnesota-twins/top-10-longest-tenured-minnesota-twins-r3586
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    I was just looking at that, so I can tell you. Aaron Hicks Daniel Ortiz BJ Hermsen Nate Hanson Mike Gonzales
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    I wonder if we're seeing the effects of that in the standings too. Since the second wild card was added in 2012, it has taken fewer and fewer wins to earn it: 93, 92, 88, and last year 86. In the AL anyway. I guess the NL skews differently (the 88 win Cardinals snuck in for 2012, and of course the Pirates and Cubs both won 97 games last year).
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    Their record at the end of the Bill Smith era was poor, but it's a great mis-representation to suggest that the organization was in "shambles" and that 4 years of aggressiveness undid a decade of solid work. The Delmon, Hardy, and Capps deals were bad, and some other moves were questionable, but that 2011 club was snakebit. Their farm system overall was pretty good, and they still had the makings of a solid team when healthy. Not that I wanted Bill Smith in charge going forward. We needed smart aggressiveness, not more roster moves suggested by Gardy and bounced off Antony.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    I'm with you on Plouffe specifically, there wasn't any demand for 3B. But I don't think the Twins are particularly tight-lipped about trades. They're obviously not among the self-promoters of MLB, but I think the Twins only seem quiet because they almost exclusively fish in the waters fewer people care about. For example, no teams were connected to Jepsen last summer at MLBTR, and that was our splashiest trade in years. We heard a lot of pre-trade rumors when selling Morneau, Willingham, etc. too. Similarly, our pursuits of certain FA (Hunter, Buehrle, etc.) were pretty well-documented, even if most of the time we were trying to strike quickly in the offseason so things didn't drag out.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    Dang it, Seth did it again, where he promoted someone's blog post to an article but left his name attached on the forum view. "Mike Bates" only appears on the article when you view it from the front page of the site, not from the forum where it is only attributed to Seth. I thought we had a convert there, for a moment!
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    I was going to post on extensions too, although I don't think it's as simple as fear of the player's price going up. I think the Twins are just way to eager to "skip" bidding on open competitive markets. No matter what, Suzuki wasn't going to get a ton more than what we extended him for. So why did we do it, when we did it? He was doing well at the moment, and we just wanted one less thing to think about, it seems. Rather than exploring the catcher market that winter (which was fairly diverse and interesting), and being willing to risk a slightly larger open-market contract for Suzuki if other options fell through, we just jumped at the chance to lock up Suzuki and forget about the position for a year-plus. Which hurt because we still had obvious deficiencies at the position. Hughes is another one. Remember we signed 3 starting pitchers (Nolasco, Hughes, and Pelfrey) before 2014, and bid on a couple others late (Santana and Garza), and two of our signings busted pretty badly during the 2014 season. So the next winter, we were probably looking for two more SP, and we ponied up for Santana. But instead of using Hughes' remaining 2/16 to our advantage, we tacked on 3/42 so we wouldn't feel the need to bother acquiring another starting pitcher. Which hurt because we gave up a lot of excess value on his original deal, and took away resources that could have supported a more aggressive move.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Great post, Mike. Agreed 100%, I really don't have a problem with their spending levels, or a rebuilding process, but I'd like to see this club work outside its comfort zone more often. I think they have a few great baseball minds/eyes, but too often it seems like they're not actually trying to use them to gain an edge on the competition. (Edited to remove erroneous attribution to Seth.)
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Almost! He's 30 in July. Let's let him enjoy his last few months in his 20's.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think everyone is certain Park will immediately adapt to MLB pitching -- rather, everyone is certain he should get an immediate opportunity to adapt to MLB pitching. Park is a talented veteran ballplayer, almost 30 years old, who needs to adapt to MLB pitching. A month or two in Rochester, after a month of MLB spring training, doesn't really help him toward that goal, it just delays it. He's not a young still-developing prospect or rusty after a long layoff like a lot of recent Cuban signings. And if he struggles at first in MLB, that's to be expected, he can work to improve, and no one but Strib commenters will be very critical. But can you imagine if we sent him to Rochester and he struggled there? It wouldn't even have to be due to a lack of skill, maybe a physical injury or the mental disappointment of getting sent down could impact his performance. And that kind of failure might set him back further or permanently hurt his chances of success in the U.S. Unless he looks absolutely terrible in spring training and you really think we might just need to cut our losses and not let him hurt the MLB team, I think you have to give him his chance to adapt to MLB starting on opening day.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    Yeah, I think "muddling along as a .500 team" gets under-rated. The Twins have finished around .500 in 2001, 2005, 2007, and 2015, and those were fun, interesting years. I would be very cautious about any plan that would deliberately sacrifice that for 3+ seasons. It's easy to look back at the White Sox recent years and say, they haven't made the playoffs, they would have been better off blowing things up for 3-4-5 years. But that feels like more of an abuse of hindsight than your exercise (which actually doesn't require much hindsight at all, the core moves of Hardy, Buehrle, Hunter, etc. were easily justifiable in real-time). The White Sox lost big one year (and got Rodon from it), otherwise they've been in the mix most years with a couple spikes to 85-88 wins. They didn't get enough luck and/or didn't make the right moves to put them over the top in any of those years, but they'd probably still face the same luck/judgment issues after tanking for 3-4-5 years too. A deliberate long-term rebuild/tank job should probably be limited to fairly extreme circumstances, like having a more thoroughly awful MLB roster AND farm system (in which case you probably don't have to do anything "deliberate" to lose ).
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    That's my feeling. Well, I am sure opportunities existed and I too would have entertained them, but in most cases, I'm guessing the net benefits weren't necessarily greater than those of the Sanchez contract, and/or those other opportunities weren't necessarily mutually exclusive from an investment in Sanchez (i.e. most flyer contracts).
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Just specific examples from that time frame to support the following statement you made: "In my mind that money would have been better spent eating money on a trade, taking on a bad contract to acquire a better asset"
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    At least with Sanchez, I know the author added $5 mil and perhaps removed the Tigers backloading, although maybe it wasn't intentional. Generally I agree with you, and when the plan gets to Martin, I consider that a bit of a stretch, although Hunter and Buehrle may have signed for a comptetive offer here without much cajoling. By the time Martin comes around, you could substitute Montero as a worthy investment anyway.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    First of all, this plan was just a general outline of the biggest money moves to stay under a certain salary level. There is still plenty of room to do some of these things on the side if you want -- note that the author didn't address Correia, Capos, etc. Feldman, Kazmir, etc. would all still be options in his scenario, just as much as in more of a rebuilding scenario (actually some guys even more so -- guys like Madson may have been more inclined to sign here if we already had a record near .500). As for the bigger financial commitments you mention, any specific examples from the past few years? Feel free to use hindsight. While in theory the alternatives sound nice, in practice I think you might see they are not actually clearly better than Sanchez.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Everyone knows Park is the Twins opening day DH. What this article presupposes is, maybe he isn't?
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Why did Hunter sign here last year, instead of pennant winner KC? I think he could have made the same calculation in 2013, especially if we were coming off a ~75 win season with Buehrle, Sanchez, Hardy, etc. rather than having Vance Worley, opening day starter. I thought the alternative plan author did a pretty solid job of keeping it in the ballpark of realism. As far as hypotheticals go, it's one of the best I've seen. He didn't have us landing Greinke, or finding Arrieta, etc.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Not necessarily meaningless, given the entire hypothetical. With Sanchez, Buehrle, Hardy, etc., 2013-2014 could have seen us contending not unlike 2015. That has value. And the 2/34 left on his hypothetical deal wouldn't hurt us any more than the 2/25 left on Nolasco's. And he's not without hope to salvage some more value yet, he hasn't missed a lot of time due to the shoulder yet, and he managed a league-average xFIP and SIERA in 2015 -- he was pretty much sunk by 29 HR allowed. He'd probably be a better bounceback candidate to put at the back of the rotation now than Nolasco, with Berrios waiting to step in. If that's the price paid for something resembling relevance in 2013-2014, so be it.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think original poster claimed there were no consequences. We weren't in an ideal position in 2011. We didn't turn in ideal performances from 2012-2014 either. The guys we did eventually sign are less than ideal too. There would be greatly non-ideal aspects to a complete tear-down and rebuild approach as advocated by others. Sanchez's 2013-2015 performances, with 2/34 remaining, might actually be the most "ideal" (or least non-ideal, if you prefer) option of the bunch.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    He was the first in that price tier to accept a Twins offer. Nolasco was more of a reactive signing to the depths of 2011-2013 rather than a proactive signing for 2014-2017.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    I hope not. They only bet $850k on Zumaya, and at least he blew out his elbow promptly and didn't drag things out. It's not like, say, the Padres' Josh Johnson deal ($8 mil for nothing). They also got Harden the following winter, although his timetable always seemed like he was a pretty big longshot. I really wanted Kazmir that winter, he had big question marks too but at least he was throwing for teams that winter. Harden seemed more like the recent Johan comebacks, he was always planning to throw / return to game action at some undetermined future date...
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    I actually like Sanchez inclusion -- it shows that the author wasn't cherry picking or relying too much on hindsight. If Sanchez was still owed 2/34, but we didn't have Nolasco at 2/25, I don't see a big problem. Interesting note. Sounds like the Twins offer was pretty weak, though (which makes sense given our next pitching moves were Marquis, then Correia and Pelfrey the next offseason): http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2011/12/mark-buehrle-rumors-monday.html
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Actually Morris got a 3 year, $7 mil deal, with salaries of 3/2/2 but with opt-outs after each year. Or, in other words, two player options. He earned $700k in incentives in 1991. Max value of the deal, with all incentives, was 3/11. K/9 rates were a lot lower circa 1989-1990, Morris was actually above league average both years. His ERAs were terrible, but he did lead the league in starts and complete games in 1990. It was a different time, so it's hard to compare. The risk of a "front-loaded" 3/7 contract with an opt-out seems so quaint. After 1992, Puckett was earning $6 mil AAV. Interesting that both Morris and Chili Davis were "new look" free agents, meaning they got to opt out of their current deals and become FA that winter as part of baseball's collusion settlement. This article suggests we failed to land Boddicker, Gibson, Gaetti, and Berenguer that winter before we landed Morris, Davis, Pagliarulo, and Bedrosian -- seems like a pretty busy offseason! https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=266&dat=19910206&id=HPQrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QmoFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1472,3221114&hl=en
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying if you can confidently project around 75-80 wins, competitiveness is an option with good luck. Your median projection is middling, but you have a meaningful best-case scenario which isn't without value. That's not really possible with a tear-down rebuild, once you're down to 60-65 wins, good luck only gets you to 75 wins, which is fairly worthless as a best-case scenario. And a projected 75-80 win team can still take flyers and flip assets for prospects as needed too, that's not an exclusive benefit of a torn-down rebuilding team. Unless you have an asset to sell immediately for a massive prospect haul (which the Twins did not in 2011), the rebuilding path basically gets you a few extra top 10 protected draft picks vs. mid-teens potentially forfeited draft picks. With the 2012 draft order already in place, I'd gladly trade down in the 2013-2015 drafts for a chance at contention (with good luck) each year.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    This seems a little revisionist. Sure, the Twins didn't have elite guys like Sano, Buxton, or Berrios in the high minors after 2011, but they had Gibson (albeit delayed by TJS), they had Hicks, Benson, Parmelee, Dozier, even Plouffe dominated AAA in 2011 and looked like a decent utility guy. Plus, at the MLB level, they had Mauer, Morneau, Hardy (assuming extension), Span, Revere, plus they were adding Willingham and Doumit. That's a solid lineup with very good upside. Pitching was obviously worse, but adding Buehrle would have done wonders for that starting staff, and at that point, I'd argue re-signing Nathan (2/14) would have affordably fit in the strategy than re-signing Capps (1/4.5). Dumping Hardy for nothing prior to 2011 hurt a ton, as did basically doubling down on the shaky 2011 pitching staff for 2012. markos's scenario avoids both of those fairly obvious pitfalls, and thus presents a far less dire situation going into 2012.
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