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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Agreed, given what the Twins were offering those years, adding cash wasn't going to sweeten the return. The more interesting idea was that of taking on other teams bad contracts to add potential assets. Although a willingness to eat salary probably could have cleared roster spots earlier. Not a huge deal, as we often weren't overloaded with internal replacements, but potentially relevant at times, i.e. Corriea who stayed on our roster into August when his starts could have been going to May and/or Meyer much earlier. True, we could have simply cut Deduno or Pino earlier, but I like the idea of trying to find hidden value in them as well as developing future value in May and Meyer. Casting aside a no-future player like Correia, even if we have to eat some salary, is clearly the best option of those 3 for a team like the 2014 Twins. Holding on to him until we can offload his remaining salary too doesn't seem to offer much present or future benefit.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    Yeah, we are pretty much already hearing from folks about how we need to conserve our money to pay Buxton, Sano, and Berrios. (Ignoring the fact that they won't make anything until 2019 at the earliest, at which point every current contract will be off our books except Hughes' last remaining guarantee of $12 mil in 2019 -- actually, I wish someone in the Twins front office had used this excuse to block the Hughes extension...)
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Yeah. From 2012-2014, the Twins seemed to be committed to getting low-variability immediate performance results from their FA investments. Sometimes that is defensible to add some stability or fill out a roster, but it doesn't seem wise as an exclusive FA strategy, especially during rebuilding years.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    FYI, Martin just posted arguably the second-best hitting season of his career. A relative decline from his outlier career year of 2014 but not really a "sign of decline" as you apply the term. McCann too has been about as good/valuable in his first two years with NY as he was in his last 2 years with Atlanta -- again, a relative decline from his long-ago Braves peak but not really any kind of strong recent decline you could accurately project into 2016. And there is plenty of reason to believe they will both be better in 2018 than 67 OPS+ replacement level performers like Suzuki in 2015. Their 2015 performances at the plate were both better than Suzuki's peak. I doubt you'd see a long-term projection that would be that pessimistic about their outlook for 2018. (I know PECOTA used to offer long-term projections, but I'm not a BP subscriber so I can't tell.)
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    With the Santana, Hunter, and Suzuki contracts, plus the $42 mil "bonus" for Phil Hughes after his first season in Minnesota, it doesn't take a whole lot of hindsight to see expectations for 2015 were quite a bit different than 2012-2014. I don't have any real quibble with total payroll or big FA pursuits, although I think the team is picking some odd spots to selectively stay tight-budget-minded even as they return to relevance (i.e. the bullpen).
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    How are those contracts similar? All for 4 years, but Nolasco is $4.5 mil AAV ahead of O'Day's deal, and Santana is a full $6 mil AAV ahead. If $9 mil is large enough to block an addition to a hypothetical 2018 star-studded team, isn't a $4.5-$6 mil AAV contract difference pretty important?
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Just FYI, but $9 mil (and O'Days $7.75 mil AAV) isn't that much in modern MLB. It should never prevent you from signing the final piece like your 2018 hypothetical, and frankly shouldn't prevent you from betting against PECOTA in what's expected to be a tight division in 2016. And the Twins seemed to be drawing a hard line well south of that this winter, without a rumored offer or strong rumored interest in any reliever beyond a $4 mil total commitment.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Uribe it is! http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016/02/indians-to-sign-juan-uribe.html
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Yeah, Ordonez career K rate: 11%, career worst: 13.5% Park was up to 25% his last two years in Korea. That would be a heck of an adjustment. For reference, Kang's K rate as a rookie last year was basically the same as his recent rates in Korea.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    You're asking me to prove the usefulness of BABIP by making a personal prediction for Danny Santana's 2016 stat line. If I said that early childhood education was a leading indicator of future academic success, would you respond, "Prove it, hotshot -- what's my nephew Danny's GPA going to be next year?" it's absurd.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    No, we're justifying the consideration of BABIP (along with other stats, of course) because of mountains of research like this: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2011/9/1/2393318/what-hitting-metrics-are-consistent-year-to-year
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    I might take a peek at that if I get some time. Again, though, I'd probably be looking at a subset of MLB teams, those trying to compete and not early/mid rebuild. Personally, I'd like Berrios at #6 and May in the mix too, but I don't see it right now. May is almost 100% slated for the pen, and until we see they are truly willing to bury Nolasco, I think Berrios is #7. That's a key distinction, because while you might prefer one group over another, Latos/Johnson/Danks aren't that much different than Milone/Duffey/Nolasco (particularly if you're at all pessimistic about Duffey as a starter going forward). And beyond that, Dean/Rogers/Darnell are not appreciably different as MLB SP fill-ins than Carroll/Beck/whomever either. Berrios vs Nolasco here is the key to the Twins depth advantage. Will be very interesting to see how that unfolds.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    I meant projected/expecting to compete, sorry. Teams like Philly and Colorado who aren't even trying to compete or establish a reliable top 6 starters really aren't comparable to teams like the current Twins and White Sox.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    But what were their projections for those same players in 2015? Probably about the same, and yet they posted OPS figures of .718 (Mauer & Arcia) and .626 (Vargas).
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Steamer has Park projected for 20 HR, but they're not really trying to project playing time. The Fangraphs depth chart projection uses Steamer rate stats but tries to project playing time too. With those PAs, he would be projected to hit 30. Park: http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=18717&position=1B Depth Charts: http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=8 However, I have no idea how they arrived at that projection. If that was his median projection (to be a top 50 hitter in MLB by wRC+), he certainly would have warranted more than a 4/24 commitment, no? I guess if you base it primarily off of Kang's success, you could get there, but with so little data and such massive error bars, that seems high for a median projection. Were Tomas, Rusney Castillo, etc. simply projected to hit like Abreu, Cespedes, and Puig?
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    But if Arcia, Vargas, or Palka plays a more prominent role, that would almost certainly mean injury / less playing time for some of your starters, likely Sano and Park.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Among near contending teams with top half rotations, like the Twins and White Sox? It might not be much more than that. It's not particularly relevant to this discussion if teams like the Rockies and Phillies churn through a bunch of starters in lost seasons.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    I removed him because it's not really relevant to a discussion of projecting pitcher health/depth. PED suspensions for MLB SP are like lightning strikes. Obviously the Twins depth helped cover for it, but that doesn't mean much going forward if it's incredibly unlikely to happen again.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't know if the common refrain has only focused on one month, or on one side of the ball. The Twins may have been lucky to escape April last year with a 10-12 record, given that their runs rank outpaced their wRC+ rank for the month, and their RA9-WAR outpaced their FIP WAR (which it did again in May). I don't know that their BaseRuns performance was ever isolated to the month of May (I don't even think that split is available anywhere).
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    In 2015, the White Sox top 6 starters to open the season made all but 9 of their starts. If not for Santana's PED suspension, the Twins top 6 starters to open the season would have possibly made all but roughly 11 of their starts. Having Berrios on the depth chart, where the White Sox don't have a comparably ready top prospect waiting in the wings, is an advantage for the Twins, but if he's 7th on the depth chart, it might only make a relatively small difference in 2016.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Hmmm... maybe Blackburn at #1 wasn't so crazy after all!
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    But not all equal AVG and OPS figures are created equal. With fewer strikeouts and a lower BABIP, it would have been possible for Santana to have the exact same AVG and OPS in the exact same number of plate appearances in 2014. But that would have been evidence of a real change in skill (reduced strikeouts) rather than luck (abnormally high average on balls in play) and would have projected better going forward. So there is value in digging deeper beyond just AVG and OPS, and I see no problem with including BABIP in that deeper analysis. Heck, you yourself referenced OPS in your evaluation of Santana, another stat introduced by "stat geeks" 30 some years ago.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Pretty sure we've heard from the Twins, perhaps indirectly, about how bad it is to sign relievers for more than one year. And I can only imagine what quality of free agents will be available during spring training...
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    That's a pretty fair statistical comp, based on Kepler's 2015 season. Hayes played most of his career around his listed 185 weight, though. Likely more speed and more willing to use it. But the power emphasis on doubles/triples, controlling the strike zone, and moving as needed between corner OF, 1B, and even CF, that was very much Kepler in 2015. Although maybe adjusting for era, the weights are pretty similar? Would also need to adjust Hayes' strikeout rates too, I suppose. EDIT: Fun essay and comments on Von Hayes here: http://www.fangraphs.com/not/the-pictorial-odyssey-of-von-hayes/
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    Given his draft pedigree and left-handedness, I think it's fair to project a floor of MLB reliever for Jay if the starting conversion doesn't work out. I don't know how good he'd be or how long he'd stick, but barring injury he'd probably get a long look there. Similar for Gonsalves and even the RHP Stewart. That would make more sense within your rankings too, and it seems like the most useful definition of floor for these guys. It was the "dominant" and then "late innings" things that threw me off. That can't be anyone's floor from A-ball. Maybe a guy like Meyer, back when he was succeeding in AAA as a starter, you could say if he doesn't stick in MLB as a starter, he could fall back to being a pretty darn good reliever. (Of course Meyer illustrates how things such as ceiling/floor can change over time too!)
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