Otto von Ballpark

I hope that, because there's a lot of RHP. I hope we didn't sign Cron and Schoop just to later sign Marwin and bench them a whole lot. I think platooning should be a way to get plus performance or save resources. Platooning Gonzalez with Cron or Schoop (or even Rosario or Kepler) seems like a recipe for a $15-18 mil, ~110 wRC+ type platoon at those spots. There's some value in having him as insurance across those positions, but that value feels lower the way this Twins team is constructed (a lot of average-ish performers already).

To be fair, Escobar and Dozier would have played a lot more had they not been traded. Polanco too, if he wasn't suspended. (And Rosario, even hurt a bit, still fell just short of your arbitrary cutoff at 138 games.) Plus, we already signed a 1B who could/should play more than Mauer, and a DH who could/should play more than Grossman.

The post to which I was responding said the manager better get him consistent at-bats. Obviously an injury situation is different. That said, the Astros had some weaker spots to go with their stars. The Twins don't have any stars yet. I'm not sure we'll see the same level of benefit from deploying Marwin Gonzalez.

So it's 2/21 for a potential platoon partner for Kepler or Rosario? I hope we're not expecting to bench many RHB against RHP.

I like Cruz, but it's a short term deal for a guy with pretty big limitations (age, position). I like it better than the other moves, but it still fits the theme. Marwin's at 2 years, but he's a ~2 WAR player except for one outlier year. Same for Schoop. Those guys might be Dozier lite (at least Dozier had several years above that level), and projection-wise, they may not even more the needle as much as Odorizzi or Lynn (who at least were looking to replace sub-1 WAR types).

Why? Gonzalez's projected WAR per PA is worse than each one of our current starting 9. If a guy gets hurt, Gonzalez is a decent band-aid, but if you're benching any of our starting 9 for him, it seems like a pretty lateral move without much upside.

Not really, at least not in my view. Theoretically, if you already have nine ~2 WAR players in your lineup, adding a 10th doesn't really improve "the top". It makes it more likely that you can indeed average 2 WAR across your starting 9 -- if a guy gets hurt or underperforms, Gonzalez can slide in and contribute his ~2 WAR. But you're still largely capped at ~18 WAR from those 9 spots. What really improves the "top" is when you can add a 4-5 WAR guy, especially at a spot where you may be looking at sub-1 WAR (i.e. Perez's rotation spot?). If they don't think there's a 4-5 WAR guy available right now, or they can't confidently say what our weak spots (sub-1 WAR) might be, then I'd almost rather wait. (Provided, of course, that we are willing to be aggressive when those 4-5 WAR guys are available, and the sub-1 WAR weak spots are clear.)

I'm with Chief here, and I don't think it's fair to phrase it as "he's not Harper". Gonzalez has a 1.8 WAR projection in full time play (595 PA). And despite his 2017, he's got a relatively narrow ranges of likely outcomes. This team is brimming with ~2 WAR types, including basically every single acquisition they've made the last two years. I wanted to see them spend money this winter too, but honestly, if it is just spending to add yet another ~2 WAR type -- one who may not even have a regular role, mind you -- for two years at $10.5 mil each guaranteed, I think I would have rather they waited. Use the money to wait out Keuchel or Kimbrel, maybe add a Cole Hamels type contract midseason, heck maybe even use it to buy prospects by providing someone else some salary relief (and thus make it easier to trade from your own stockpile of prospects for MLB talent).

Passan says 2 year, $21 mil on Twitter.

My dad once saw the sponsor's graphic during a pitching change on TV, and asked us, "Who's this new pitcher, Verizon Wireless?" (He pronounced it VARE-eh-zahn, but strangely pronounced "Wireless" correctly and still assumed it was a surname.)

Agreed. Signing Gonzalez will improve our chances of hitting our 82 win projection. But it will do relatively little to improve our chances of hitting 90 wins. Gonzalez looks like a ~2 WAR player. And on this club, it seems like he'd mostly either fill in for, or take time away from, other ~2 WAR players. (Edit to add: that can be useful and have value -- but it's not something I'm really excited about investing in longer term.)

Including the Blake Parker signing!

You are correct. The Twins could cut Adrianza before opening day and only owe him 30-45 days worth of termination pay.

You've got to look at this relative to other MLB players. There has never been an MLB player who has left $80+ mil on the table in pursuit of a championship. So there is nothing in this contract to suggest that Machado's motivation is different than that of any other MLB player.

Hosmer is much worse, no doubt. Particularly since they had already Myers, a corner player whose best position is probably 1B. The Padres might have to eat a little salary to move Myers for 2020-2022, but it's probably not an albatross.

It would have to be A LOT less, to the point of being unreasonable. The Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers have virtually zero room to add additional salary, per the luxury tax. So in order to "make room" for Machado, they'd have to give away a valuable player (or multiple players) at another position. Moreover, in all 3 cases, Machado could be displacing a cheaper, younger, controllable player at either SS or 3B in the lineup. If Machado signed with the Padres for $300 mil over the Yankees at $290 mil or something, maybe you've got a point that he's choosing money over winning. But evidence suggests the gap would be at least $80 mil or more. I don't think it's fair to impugn a player's motivations because he didn't want to leave $80+ mil on the table.

I suspect Clippard wouldn't have come here on a minor league deal. Looking at Cleveland's depth chart, he might already be their top right-hander out of the pen! But conventional wisdom suggests we could have probably landed him on a MLB deal.

I've got news for you: Blake Parker is probably a Fernando Rodney-type. In addition to Rodney, we also lost Pressly from the 2018 pen, which is going to counteract some of the potential benefit from adding Romero and hopefully a full season of May. I might understand waiting if the proposed price was a costly trade -- but the cost appears to be just money in free agency right now. Why wait? Even if we added the most expensive option in Kimbrel, we'd still have enough flexibility to add additional salary at the deadline if necessary (since we'd only have to pay a deadline acquisition for 2 months). What exactly is the upside to "wait and see" besides money in Pohlad's pocket? Giving a nice long leash to Hildenberger or Magill?

FWIW, the Shields contract wasn't "absolutely awful" at the time. It was only 4 years, $75 mil, for a durable and performing pitcher by both bWAR and fWAR up to that point. Yes, there was risk -- Shields was entering his age 33 season -- but it wasn't a bad amount of risk. Ervin was only a year younger when we signed him, with a worse track record of performance. Agreed that Myers and Hosmer were not good investments, though. Not much excuse for those, especially Hosmer (Myers was at least younger, with some positional flexibility).

As far as I know, the Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees made no offer to Machado. Judging by the numbers at Cot's Contracts, none of those 3 clubs had any kind of room to sign Machado under the luxury tax threshold. So you're not talking about a difference of $30 mil from the Padres vs. $25 mil from those contenders. The closest contender who was in any kind of pursuit of Machado was probably the Phillies -- but they're only projected as a .500 team at Fangraphs, in a very competitive division. I suspect the Padres will fare worse than that in 2019, but I'm not sure the difference is stark enough, especially beyond 2019, to judge the player's intentions. Especially since we don't know the terms of the Phillies offer.

It's still not necessarily a bad deal. The next 3 years should be Machado's best. Eating $30 mil to trade him after 3 years would be the same outcome as signing him to a 3 year, $120 mil deal.

I am pretty sure it is just a player opt-out. So it's a 10 year deal unless Machado thinks he can do better than 5/150 in 5 years.

Is he in poor shape? Or does he simply have an unusual natural shape for a pro athlete?

Although now that I think about it, that extra year is basically a minimum salary year -- so you are right, the terms are basically the same. If anything, the Twins are taking on more risk by guaranteeing it a year earlier -- so it would be nice to get two option years instead of just one.

Sorry everyone for hijacking the thread, but I'd like to jump back to this. I wasn't trying to ignore any questions, but perhaps I wasn't being clear in my responses. I'll try here. "What are you really saying about this methodology I need to look at more closely? To what end?" First of all, it's important to remember these Fangraphs dollar figures are just a column on their player stat tables expressing past WAR values in dollar terms. They're not saying these are contracts, or should be contracts, or you could assemble a whole team with contracts like these, etc. Looking back at any random player and season, it's just another way of saying Dozier's 2016 performance was valuable. Other ways to say it might involve his 42 HR that year as a second baseman, or his 132 wRC+, etc. But the nice thing about WAR (and by extension, WAR in dollar terms) is that it attempts to quantify these value estimates relative to league, park, and position. We know 42 HR from a 2B in 2016 is more valuable than 42 HR from a 1B in Coors Field in 2000 -- but it's also nice to estimate how much, especially when the comparisons aren't so stark. As I said, that's all looking backward. But there is a more careful, limited use of it looking forward, if instead of past WAR you look at future projected WAR. If you see how much teams are paying in free agency (and trades) for projected future WAR, you get a dollars per WAR figure you can use as a baseline for roughly estimating FA contracts, trade returns, and such. Like in the case of Michael Brantley. He was a FA this winter. He had 3.5 WAR last year, but at his age and health history, we won't project him to repeat that. Fangraphs has him projected at 2.4 WAR for 2019. We observe that teams recently have paid $8 mil per projected WAR in free agency and trade. So, we could estimate a potential salary of $19 mil for him on a one-year contract for 2019, or less than that on a multiyear deal where the projected WAR would gradually decline with age. And indeed, he actually signed for 2/32 -- not far off. Now there are a ton of other factors -- most obviously a team may have different projections for a player. Maybe that $ per WAR figure is going down around the league, maybe there is a lot of competition on the market at that position, maybe a team is willing to pay for upside above projected WAR, or for a steady performance floor, etc. Clearly not every team would have equal interest in signing him at that figure. But it's an easy way to get an *estimate* without having to duplicate the extensive work of an MLB front office! It's very useful, for a fan who wants to estimate what a FA might get, or quickly analyze whether a FA contract is fair (or favors the team or player). I agree that in this thread, it's not really appropriate for judging Kepler's extension right now, because he's not a free agent or even particularly close to free agency. He was an asset already under control for sub-market prices -- something the Fangraphs figure is clearly not trying to incorporate. But that's an issue with the application of the information, not the information from Fangraphs itself. (Although it could be relevant for Kepler soon -- a team looking at Kepler as a potential trade target would be looking at the value he provides, above his salary, compared to alternatives on the open market.)