Otto von Ballpark

I was just thinking, it might be instructive to look at Brock's question in terms of luck. (Pardon the long post here, and don't take it as some long diatribe against Gonzalez - it's really just exploring the nature of projections and things!) The projection I shared from Fangraphs is a median projection, assuming no luck or neutral luck. (An aside: the projection is not *predicting* that there will be no luck or neutral luck -- it's simply attempting to quantify/isolate an estimate of the luck and non-luck involved between players and teams.) Anyway, that median projection of +1 win with Gonzalez assumes no luck, or neutral luck. And Brock's question (correct me if I am wrong) is asking whether it properly captures Gonzalez's value in a bad-luck scenario, like an extended injury or performance collapse, that normally involves replacement players. Gonzalez can definitely help as a replacement in some bad luck situations, especially with his versatility. But not in all bad luck situations -- most obviously, bad luck on the pitching staff won't have too much to do with Gonzalez (beyond what he contributes with his teammates on defense). Bad luck at catcher is pretty unrelated to Gonzalez too (beyond maybe the Astudillo utility factor, if we'd really use him in these roles). Even with bad luck at other positions, he doesn't help equally across all positions -- an injury to Buxton in CF is only covered by Gonzalez indirectly, by pushing a corner player to CF. And even where he could cover them directly, like at 2B/SS/3B, there is still some uncertainty in Gonzalez's own performance record about how he might perform in truly extended action at those positions. This is no knock on Gonzalez, it's really just a reflection of limitations on any one player's effect on a team. All of this is to say: the more bad luck we have, the more likely we are to get a bad luck situation that Gonzalez can best address. But the more bad luck we have, we're also moving further away from the median and toward the floor on a spectrum of projection outcomes. We can all come up with scenarios where Gonzalez successfully mitigates some isolated patch of bad luck while the rest of the team enjoys good luck near our ceiling projection -- but definitionally, that's going to be a fairly rare combination of events. It shouldn't move a projection needle much. So to me, anyway, it makes some intuitive sense that Gonzalez, projected as a 1.5 WAR player, might have value at mitigating bad-luck situations that could be represented as +1 win at our median projection. And that value could be higher (+1.5 wins?) as we move towards our projection floor, and lower (+0.5 wins?) as we move toward our ceiling. (Another way to look at it would be percentage odds of each outcome. I think adding 1 win to the median projection, bumping it up to 83 wins, can also be interpreted as increasing our odds of winning 82, increasing our odds further of winning at least 75 or so, but probably giving a smaller increase in our odds of winning as many as 90.) Of course, none of this is gospel, it's just Fangraphs estimate. Projections based on B-Ref's value estimates might give Gonzalez a +0.5 projected WAR boost for 2019. Plenty of folks probably disagree with the 82 win pre-Gonzalez Twins baseline projection too. But relative to that, I hope I've laid out how +1 median win is probably fairly encapsulating Gonzalez's replacement value.

I expect we would have traded him, just for something even less than Murphy (if such a thing is possible ). More just to clear the roster spot than to get anything back, though. Hicks was still cheap, and someone would have wanted to give him another chance, just like the Yankees did.

It does increase the win projection -- just like it did at Fangraphs. It's just that it increases it more towards the floor (where Brock's scenario of needing replacements is more common) than it does at the median or towards the ceiling. This is a separate issue, and not really a reflection of reality either. The Twins weren't playing Morrison because they had to roster Motter. They played Morrison because they were invested in him and felt he was the best bet; they rostered Motter as a reserve because they felt they had the space available to do so. There's not a competent front office in the world that would keep starting Morrison if they felt they had better options, just to keep Taylor Motter on the bench.

I think you'd have more confidence if we could actual see the "confidence levels" of these projections. We see the median projection, but we don't see the 15th percentile one, the 85th percentile one, etc. I suspect that adding a 10th starter like Gonzalez raises the median projection a little (as we saw at Fangraphs), raises the 85th percentile one a little less (not much ceiling added), and raises the 15th percentile projection more (a higher floor). If you're talking about the possibility of getting dragged down by replacements, you're really talking about what's going on around that floor -- but that effect is gradually reduced as you move up to the median and toward the ceiling projections. (Definitionally, your projected starters are going to be healthier and bust less as you move up to the median and ceiling projection levels, reducing the likelihood of replacements dragging you down.)

I'm not sure I follow. The replacement level guys generally aren't on the roster if they're not getting a chance to replace somebody -- certainly not the 25-man roster, and often not the 40-man either. And a team not wanting to replace Morrison has nothing to do with Brock's question, which read to me as how much can a team count on getting ~0 WAR performance when it actually needs to turn to replacements. (I brought up Morrison of an example of a guy who will hurt you more than a bad replacement level player, because the team is committed to playing Morrison a lot more.)

It's worth noting that Taylor Motter wasn't really added to be a replacement. He was awful when we picked him up, and we added him to the bench for a little while when we were largely packing it in for the season (i.e. after we added Belisle to the pen). If we were actually looking for a guy to play regularly, and play somewhat well, I suspect we would have used more care and caution. Negative performances do add up, but in small samples they generally can't be too negative. Chris Davis was one of the worst players in MLB history last year. He was worth -2.8 bWAR for the season. A replacement level type probably wouldn't even get one-tenth of his playing time before he was sent packing with that level of performance. And odds are unlikely you'd get repeated performances that bad from a series of replacement level players, unless you were so unprepared that you were signing guys off the street during the season (i.e. 2011 Twins at catcher). If one guy is -0.3 and gets cut, the next guy is still probably just zero or maybe even +0.3 or +0.6 or whatever, maybe not even through skill but just random variation. By the time you get up to Morrison's 350 PA level, you have likely settled on a Cave or Palka and are looking at a cumulative 0-1 WAR from the replacements.

Sorry, didn't mean to come across like I was ignoring your conditional -- just wanted to be clear to anyone following the discussion that it wasn't an additional, simultaneous benefit to the other more commonly mentioned benefit. How honestly, how much would you expect your fine tuning benefit to be worth? It would seem to pale in comparison to the other one.

It also seems like that kind of fine tuning, and even platooning, while made easier with more data in the modern game, its benefits are going to be capped somewhat in this era of short starts (or no starts!) and expansive bullpens. Each lineup spot could be facing 3-4 different pitchers per game (and of course the other team has a lot of the same data you have, and can use it while deploying their pitchers). Not that it can't be worth pursuing, but it's important to keep its benefits in perspective.

Wait a minute -- were you trying to make the trade sound better from the Twins perspective, or worse?

Will this fine tuning produce any more notable gains than the questionable platoon examples? Something, perhaps, but it sounds like a pretty small order of magnitude. Small enough to question whether a .500-ish projection team should be chasing it with limited resources. And of course, this kind of fine tuning is only really possible if everyone is healthy and performing as expected. Many folks have been touting Gonzalez's value as a replacement for injured or under-performing players, which is real value -- but as soon as that happens, any real value from fine-tuning ends.

I'm not sure I see it. This sounds like another way to phrase "they can't be aggressive yet because they don't know what they have in their core." But I think they do know what they have in their core, as many observers have known since they took over. They don't have any/many stars, but despite the awful 2016, they had a bunch of cheap young players who are collectively pretty competent (Berrios, Rosario, Kepler, Polanco). Throw in a few older competent assets they inherited too, like the now-departed Escobar, Pressly, Dozier, and Ervin. The results bear it out -- we've been right around a .500 team each of the last two seasons, because of this competent core. Which is why it's frustrating to see the front office to add to the MLB roster, almost exclusively, with short-term competent upside veterans. Those types of players can serve a purpose, but for this club it seems be an over-reliance. I won't say we've "wasted" the last two years, but we've basically spent the cheapest years of the Berrios/Rosario/Kepler/Polanco core content to float around .500, flip veterans for prospects at the deadline, and looking at any pennant race action as a bonus. And if we're really waiting for some guys to become bonafide "stars" before we get aggressive, we're likely looking at another couple seasons of this too (at least). They've done plenty of good things with the org too, so I won't call them failures, or call their offseasons failures -- but I'm not sure I'd call them successes yet either. At best, ownership and the front office seems to be settling into that .500-ish competence reflecting what they're content to put on the MLB field too.

Those are interesting questions, but I'd argue that replacement players usually aren't that bad -- or more accurately, they're not given enough opportunity to be that bad. Their leash is much shorter. By virtue of being replacement level, a team really doesn't mind cycling through these guys quickly to find one that works (even temporarily). See how we wound up deploying Jake Cave for the second half last year, or even Bartolo Colon for the last few months of 2017. The guys who really sink you are guys like Morrison, or Bartolo Colon with the Braves in early 2017, or Chris Davis, etc. -- guys to whom you've already committed a ton of opportunity by virtue of their contract, regardless of performance. If Polanco went down for a long time, and we had to plug in Adrianza, I think we'd move along to Torreyes and others pretty quickly if necessary. You probably won't equal Polanco's performance with these replacements, of course, but generally you will come out of it with at least 0-1 WAR type performance. (And of course, if it's a shorter absence, that effectively caps how much negative value the replacement can contribute too.) And most competent teams, at most positions, seem to have these replacement types available every year. It seems almost notable when a team doesn't, like the 2011 Twins after Mauer went down at catcher (a non-move which may have contributed to Smith's firing as much as some of his higher profile moves).

Is that a good thing? Gonzalez has a career 101 wRC+ versus RHP. - Cruz had a 126 wRC+ vs RHP last year, and a 123 career mark. - Schoop has a reverse split for his career -- 101 vs RHP, 85 vs LHP. - Cron has no platoon split -- 111 vs both RHP and LHP for his career. - He should be a defensive upgrade over Sano at 3B, but FWIW, Sano has a 114 wRC+ vs RHP for his career too. This makes a bit more sense, although Rosario and Kepler both showed signs of competence vs LHP last year -- Rosario with a 95 wRC+ vs LHP, and Kepler with a 101. Do the Twins want to nurture that into their prime years, or immediately turn them into platoon players? Gonzalez only has a 104 wRC+ vs LHP for his career. We certainly can get at bats for Gonzalez on this team even if everyone is healthy, but I'm not sure of the benefits of doing so. (Obviously if someone is hurt or collapses, the benefits of Gonzalez become clearer.)

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Why would Hicks agree to such a deal, though? Wouldn't he rather get the same $70 mil and be a FA again at age 33 rather than age 36? He's got some leverage, he was already getting $6 mil this year and was going to be a free agent very soon. Frankly, with a $6 mil final arbitration salary, it's not unreasonable from his perspective to lock in 6/64 for his age 30-35 seasons in this market. As much as that arb salary is held down by his poor career start, that same poor career start would probably hold him back in FA next winter too (shorter track record, consistency questions).

Actually just through his age 35 season -- is starts with this year, his age 29 season.

Yeah. Maybe they think Reed is the better player, and they'd rather wait to pass him through waivers at the end of spring training when other clubs are facing their own roster crunches (assuming a spot doesn't open up for him here in the meantime). Of course, then they risk losing both Granite and Reed this spring. But they can probably take that risk now, with Gonzalez signed for 2 years plus Cave with 2 option years left. An open 40-man spot might be just as valuable to us as another fungible outfielder.

FWIW, Lance Lynn had *pitched* in 24 postseason games (7 starts) when we signed him (including a World Series clincher in 2011), compared to Gonzalez's current 30 postseason games as a position player. How valuable was that? Nelson Cruz has a whopping 41 career postseason games (including, regrettably, some in the field like Game 6 of the 2011 World Series). Addison Reed has pitched in 13 postseason games; Rodney had pitched in 13 when we signed him too. Schoop's played in 12, and Castro 7 (including 1 with the Twins, believe it or not). Martin Perez has one too! Somewhat surprisingly, Pineda has never appeared in the postseason, and neither has Odorizzi.

Don't know where else to put this, but the Twins just DFA'd Granite to make room for Gonzalez. A little surprising, since Granite has options remaining and Reed doesn't. But perhaps this is a good time to sneak Granite through waivers, as opposed to Reed?

Hicks was already getting $6 mil this year, his final arb season. So it's kind of like a 6/64 FA contract (signed a year early), covering his age 30-35 seasons.

Interesting that the Fangraphs article on the signing was titled "Twins Add Wins with Marwin Gonzalez". Note the plural "wins". Fangraphs Depth Charts projections have now been updated to include Gonzalez, and they moved our median projection by just a single win, from 82 wins to 83 wins. This is a numerical illustration of my opinion that the signing did more to improve our floor / solidify our current projection, than it did to improve our projection or ceiling. (cue Seinfeld's "Not that there's anything wrong with that") Gonzalez himself is projected at 1.5 WAR in 504 PA, though, which could still qualify as plural "wins" especially if you round up. https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=8

Great discussion here! Here's something I shared in the xwOBA article comments: Marwin Gonzalez was MLB's biggest xwOBA over-performer in 2017 (minimum 200 PA): https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfBBT=&hfPR=&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2017%7C&hfSit=&player_type=batter&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&hfInfield=&team=&position=&hfOutfield=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&hfPull=&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=name&sort_col=wobadiff&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=desc&min_pas=200#results For the 2015-2018 regular seasons, Gonzalez cumulatively has a .332 wOBA vs an xwOBA of .305. 2018 he was almost an even match -- .318 wOBA vs .317 xwOBA. More from Marwin Gonzalez's Statcast page: "Similar Batters to Marwin Gonzalez: Neil Walker Rougned Odor David Freitas Matt Joyce Alex Gordon" https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/marwin-gonzalez-503556?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb#batted_ball

Yup. This is reflected in Fangraphs 2019 projections too -- they have Cleveland at 92 wins, and the Twins at 83. It's not quite the widest gap of any division's top 2 teams -- the AL West has a 10 win spread, and the NL West 12 -- but it's close. That's not to say there isn't hope. Cleveland is pretty top-heavy -- one or two of their top projected performers getting hurt or significantly under-performing could close that gap in a hurry. Yup. The original Detroit Cabrera extension was fantastic (2008-2015) -- but the second one (2016-2023) was highly dubious from the start. In some ways, it was worse than Pujols -- at least Pujols was a free agent, and you could argue that the Angels had to overpay just to get him; by contrast, Cabrera still had 2 years left on his original extension when Detroit gave him the new one.

But, by the Dennis Green Principle, if they are who *we* thought they were, we can still crown their asses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAN9ORwsiVA

I think Ervin can opt out of his deal if he doesn't make the team out of spring training, so there is really no "stashing him at AAA." And once he makes the roster, he gets a $4.3 mil salary too. It's really just a "minor league deal" so the team can check his health during spring training, which also allows them to delay making a 40-man roster move.