Otto von Ballpark

With hard caps on draft and international spending, there's no real benefit to doing that anymore. You could prefer 18 year old high school draftees to 21 year old college draftees, I suppose (and I'm sure some teams already do in some situations), but most of those high school guys aren't going to contribute much in MLB before age 23 anyway. And this ignores your point about extended arbitration. Yes, drafting a 22 year old Brent Rooker gets you fewer years of control if he's a free agent at age 29, but with fewer opportunities for arbitration, they're potentially cheaper overall. And his pre-arb years will be closer to his projected "prime" age seasons.

Bryant will be a free agent 8.5 years after signing. The best players aren’t always using all of their options or minor league years.

And your proposal suggests it should be pushed back to age 32?

I like the idea, although I agree with the others that these particular parameters seem harsh on college draftees. Maybe just make it universally age-based, so free agency at age 29?

An illustration of how much we overpaid: Rauch was a few years older but largely the same pitcher in terms of 2010/career performance as Capps (see my previous post). We got 1+ years of team control of Rauch during the 2009 August waiver trade period for basically nothing (sorry, Kevin Mulvey!). During those 1+ years, we paid Rauch about $3.5 mil in salary. To get 1+ years of team control of Capps in 2010, we gave up Ramos (MLB-ready catcher prospect, #58 on BA's preseason list) AND we had to pay Capps over $8 mil for his services during that time. Now, they were both useful pitchers in 2010 and there's nothing wrong with having useful pitchers, and not every useful pitcher can be acquired as cheaply as another, but that wide gulf in cost is problematic. Heck, a month after we got Capps, we got Brian Fuentes for basically nothing too (sorry, Loek Van Mil!). Fuentes was near the end of his line but still quite useful -- 11 games, 12.1 shutout innings for his Twins career -- and only cost us about $1.5 mil for the month/playoffs.

An opinion supported by what? Here's a fun game -- see if you can distinguish between Rauch and Capps' 2010 overall stat lines: 3.12 RA9, 2.94 FIP, 1.301 WHIP, 9.5 H/9, 0.5 HR/9, 2.2 BB/9, 7.2 K/9 3.33 RA9, 3.23 FIP, 1.260 WHIP, 9.2 H/9, 0.7 HR/9, 2.1 BB/9, 7.3 K/9 Your opinion is that one of those pitchers may have been 6+ wins worse than the other, over a two month span? Their relief careers 2005-2010 look similarly interchangeable: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2010&month=0&season1=2005&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=4788,1475&startdate=&enddate=

All that said, Ramos wasn't really good enough with Washington to make this super-regrettable, although our organization was exposed as embarrassingly thin at catcher, just a few baseball months after trading him, so that was kinda bad. Then Ramos went on to have arguably his best year in 2016, still under team control, the exact same season where we swapped Aaron HIcks for John Ryan Murphy to shore up our catching...

Happ is a decent pitcher, and every team needs those on its staff -- but it's worth noting how little the Yankees regarded Happ in the postseason (and how much Happ's own performance reinforced that). The Yankees played 21 postseason games over Happ's 3 seasons there, and Happ only got 1 start (for 2 innings). Only 4 relief appearances too, suggesting he may have been somewhere around 7th or 8th on the bullpen depth chart. All of this while Happ was fully healthy, and the rest of the staff often had notable limitations and absences. Happ's postseason line with the Yankees: 5 G, 8.1 IP, 11 H, 10 ER, 6 BB, 7 K, 4 HR, 10.80 ERA

I'm not so sure about that. I'd say the pre-Capps bullpen wasn't that far behind the post-Morneau lineup, or the fully healthy rotation which featured Brian Duensing as our third starter in the postseason.

There is no evidence to support that latter claim, Seth. On the surface, it seems doubtful, since we won the division by 6 games and Capps, while good, was still just 2 months of a mostly 1-inning reliever, whose numbers weren't appreciably different than the guy he bumped down the depth chart (Rauch). But it actually looks worse when you examine it closely. Our only real competitor for the playoffs late that season was the White Sox, and indeed we were 1.5 games behind them when we acquired Capps. Maybe Capps' performance against the White Sox was responsible for our turnaround? Nope -- here's Capps first 4 games as a Twins against them: 1. the last inning of a 5-run loss 2. the last inning of a 5-run win 3. blown save, we still won in extras (Jim Thome game) 4. gave up a run in the 9th, putting the tying run in scoring position, but escaped with a save At this point, the Twins had already opened up a 5-game lead on the White Sox and were already in the driver's seat in the division -- the lead would never be smaller than 3.5 after that, and in fact grew to as many as 12 games in mid-September as the White Sox spiraled downward. Maybe Capps was clutch in our other games, to get to that point? Not really -- in his first 7 save opportunities for the Twins, Capps actually allowed runs in 4 of them. Only one of those outings was a scoreless 1-run save, and he only came into a tied game once in that period too. He wasn't bad or anything, but there just wasn't the opportunity or performance for him to be considered a main factor behind our 7-game swing in the standings over 3 weeks.

Well said! For the most part, the "mental preparation" of taking time between pitches should be a zero sum game. Whatever batters feel like they gain from it, they probably lose by giving the pitcher and catcher (and defense?) extra time to prepare too. Actually, batters might benefit more from a pitch clock than anyone, if pitchers velocity/command diminish a little faster with less rest between pitches. I wouldn't even mind if players needed to step out and take extra time in the most tense moments -- it's the routine of doing it for every single pitch of every single plate appearance that is tiresome (and adds up, in terms of game time).

Not all outs are boring! Even when well-positioned, there are regularly exciting outs. Not just from Mookie Betts, but even Ji-Man Choi too. And what kid doesn't love making a sliding catch, leaping grab, or a diving stop? Those don't go away with the shift. But they do go away with strikeouts. See my post above for the numbers (World Series K rate was ~30%).

A screaming line drive seems pretty exciting? And the correct positioning of defenders seems like a good strategy to reward (and discuss). I know it is subjective, but what I find boring is a lot of strikeouts -- especially when combined with long game times. Roughly 30% of plate appearances in the 2020 World Series ended in a strikeout. To give you an idea of what that means, Adam Dunn struck out in only 28.6% of his career PA. So basically the entire series was just repeated Adam Dunn style plate appearances... You can further compare that rate to just 16% strikeouts from the 1991 WS. The 2020 WS featured 20% fewer balls in play per 9 innings than the 1991 WS -- but took 20% longer to complete! Not really an ideal combo...

I am intrigued! Although some pitchers don't mind taking their sweet time on the mound too, even without batting gloves to distract them. Hence why I'm in favor a pitch clock. Sounds unnatural, but that's the pace of the sport at every other level, as well as the pace of MLB for most of its history -- the pace of modern MLB, with batters stepping out and pitchers circling the mound after every pitch, is really the aberration. I suspect that after a few growing pains in spring training, players would become re-accustomed to it (they've all played at this quicker pace before MLB) and no one would notice the clock.

If "pace of play" refers to the frequency of balls in play, then broadening those offensive outcomes would be an improvement in that area too. More "action" in the same time of game.

I guess I am curious what you mean by "low level prospects". Were the Twins motivated to deal May and Duffey a couple years ago? They both entered their age-28 seasons with career ERAs over 5 too (albeit better career FIPs). And arguably neither one of them up until that point had as good of a season in the relief as Stephenson's 2019, his first full-time out of the pen. (Actually quite comparable statistically to May's 2019 season.) Stephenson is far from untouchable, but that doesn't mean they'd flip him just to restock their minor league prospect depth. I suspect they'd want something in return that could help them in 2021, and/or meaningful prospects.

Why would the Reds be motivated to deal Stephenson? He's arb eligible for the first time this winter but MLBTR estimates he may only get $600k, barely more than league minimum. And given the players they have under contract, the Reds intend to contend in 2021 (and should, in a fairly weak division). And it's not like Stephenson is a lost cause -- he was solid in his first year as a full-time reliever in 2019. His issue in 2020, aside from a stint on the IL making an already small sample even smaller, was 8 HR in just 10 IP. 7 of the HR came in just 3 games. It's obviously something they will have to get under control but it doesn't seem too daunting of a task. He's not worth top prospects at this point, obviously, but that doesn't mean the Reds will have any motivation to deal him for low-level prospects.

You got me there. My mistake was being ignorant of the NFL/NCAA football attendance rules in Texas -- it isn't much of a stretch to see MLB just follow along with those. I wonder what percentage of these fans are traveling for their teams? And I wonder if Atlanta and LA will object to fan attendance if the Astros advance and the WS crowd is overwhelmingly pro-Astros every game...

By WAR, OPS, and OPS+, Kepler and Rosario appear better than both Robert and Merrifield in 2020 too, and don't have quite the playing time problems of Buxton.

FYI, better to use ISO (isolated power) than SLG, because SLG basically double-counts batting average. Still a drop for Grandal in 2020, but not as big -- and the whole league dropped too. And like the league batting average was near an all-time low, league K% climbed to another all-time high. (Grandal's rise in K% still outpaced that, but it's worth noting, especially in such a small sample -- for example, Grandal was owned by Cleveland pitchers in 2020, which may have had an outsized effect on his overall stats as compared to a normal season schedule.)

But is he as much of a gamer as Trevor May?

? Obviously Perez had a better season, but we're not seriously saying a hitter "struggled" in 2020 based on a .230 batting average, are we? The whole league only batted .245, and Grandal still had a 113 OPS+ in 2020. For his career, he has a .240 AVG and 115 OPS+. I'd say Grandal simply met expectations, while Perez exceeded them.

To be fair, these are only the pending free agents still playing on the final 8 teams that might interest the Twins (according to this writer). Additional free agents this winter include Trevor Bauer, George Springer, DJ LeMahieu, Michael Brantley, and Marcell Ozuna. (And Nelson Cruz, of course.) A second tier could include Odorizzi, Andrelton Simmons, Jose Quintana, Marcus Stroman.

You're assuming the Twins would have actually held on to that lead, which seems generous given the evidence we've seen since!