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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    How competitive was the offer, really? It doesn't appear Darvish was particularly close to accepting 5/110 from a random midmarket team. The Cubs were always looming. Milwaukee's similar offer was 3 weeks ago and went nowhere, which should have been a data point in favor of a more aggressive offer, if we actually wanted the player and minimize our chances of being "undercut". (And I might quibble with the term "undercut" as Darvish signed for less than any analyst predicted at the start of the offseason. Seems like *we* were trying to undercut *him* too severely.) The fact that it would have been the biggest FA deal in Twins history is not particularly reassuring either. That is primarily a function of our franchise's past cheapness, which is something we knew we had to overcome when recruiting top level FA, not highlight. (And of course even this offer was greatly eclipsed by a soon-to-expire extension, further suggesting that the yardstick by which to measure our franchise's potential capacity to spend on top level FA would be closer to Mauer than Ervin Santana.) Given the strangeness of the market, and the recency of Darvish's surgery, this may have been the Twins best/only opportunity ever to sign a top level FA. Given those circumstances, making a late conservative offer seems like a rather careless fumbling of the opportunity.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    What if 10 teams come to that conclusion? They can't all have him for 5/105, or even buy X number of wins for 2018 for $105 mil elsewhere. So what to do? Is it worth it to spend a, say, $20 mil premium on top of this, spread over 5 years, to actually get the player? Projections like this are a good sanity check, but they shouldn't be used to strictly limit an offer.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    The coast of Lake Michigan?
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    Lewis-plus, for Archer OR Honeywell. Keep in mind, Sano and Kepler are about to get more expensive.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    I'm not so sure of that. I think he valued himself pretty close to the consensus of 6 years and/or $135-168 mil. The opt out alone probably isn't enough to get him to pass on that goal to sign earlier in Minnesota, but it would have been a good aggressive first step. Ultimately I think we were going to have to hit those consensus targets, but it was within our sights.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    I think he meant consensus predicted value, the 6/160 prediction from MLBTR, etc. I don't think anyone had him pegged below 6 years and/or $135 mil, though. And he was the consensus top guy and no one else was signing, so it's not like other options were going off the table. I think "longshot" overstates the chance he would ultimately settle for fewer years AND fewer dollars to go to a random, unfamiliar midmarket club.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    It was widely understood the Cubs needed one more SP after Chatwood, though. And with the Yankees and Dodgers out, the Cubs were pretty much guaranteed a chance to beat any small market offer. More interesting is that even after Chatwood, the Cubs reportedly offered 3/42 to Cobb which he turned down. That could have changed the Darvish picture, and set off some other FA dominoes.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Why in the world would the Rays trade the #12 prospect in baseball?
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Again, apples to oranges. The comparison is not "opt out vs no opt out", it's "opt out vs. no opt out plus $25 mil" or whatever. The opt out has value which is already represented in the contract terms.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    I mean, it was borderline zero percent chance with the Cubs still in the hunt. Forget trumping it, they were likely to win just by matching. And there were still ~5 teams in the mix with similar offers, right? What would be a non-serious offer in your opinion?
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    You yourself used the words "hope" and "longshot" to describe our offer. Not sure how that fits with "serious".
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    And neither of us will pay to get past the paywall and read the full context? Maybe we deserve to be Twins fans. As to "reporting" and not "facts", we're not dealing with some rare or unique situation here. There are regular FA signings in baseball and plenty of established custom about what gets reported. But you have people on this very thread who put forth the nonsensical idea that, "hey, maybe the Twins beat the Cubs offer but Darvish didn't take it." That defies logic. And personally, I don't view the idea that "hey, maybe the Twins were willing to beat the Cubs offer but just never got the chance for reasons beyond their control" as making any more sense.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Yes, but their reported late offer does not imply seriousness. With the Cubs interested, were they "seriously" expecting that Darvish would sign in Minnesota for 5/~110? Sounds like they were only "serious" about signing him if a nonserious condition (his market price falling precipitously) came true.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    I didn't read it like that. I just don't read "priority" as meaning "sure, we'd sign him if he's willing to sign with any rando team for ~30% less than expected."
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    I read the Rosenthal quote as referring to earlier reporting on their Darvish offer, which had more ambiguity about the dollar amount. So it was closer to $100 mil than, say, $125. Or referring to a lack of an opt out or other clauses that were not directly financial. Not clear if there was any implication implied about the Twins offer either, the Rosenthal quote says nothing about the Twins and is only juxtaposed near a bullet point about the Twins by MLBTR editors. (The actual Rosenthal piece is behind a paywall.)
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    My first paragraph was addressing the claim of Darvish disinterest. To your post, I'd say "hope" != "priority" And that "limit" the Twins set has never brought a top FA here, or arguably anywhere. A lot of people would not consider that a "perfectly acceptable" result. If not now, at SP, then is there ever an appropriate time for the Twins to be aggressive about a top FA? If not, let's stop the charade of "priority".
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    I totally get you. And I would be the first to ridicule the notion that the Twins could have landed Darvish simply by matching the Cubs deal, or even besting it by a nominal amount. That is indeed naive. But it defies credulity to think the Twins really could have shown aggressiveness this offseason -- an offseason where the dominant theme is players complaining that MLB are colluding to suppress such aggressiveness -- but it just went completely undetected and unreported. It requires not only ignoring the published reports of this offseason, but also ignoring past history. The Twins have a long history of being fairly passive (at best) about expending financial resources to improve the team.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    How does that contradict anything I wrote? It says nothing about how the Brewers offer compares to that of the Twins. I think it is telling that they have only been described using the same financial terms.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Of course, in this case, Plan A (Darvish) and most Plan B's and C's (1 year deals or internal options) aren't mutually exclusive. The best bet is actually a combination of the plans.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    Almost all of those missed starts are related to the same surgery, though. He first went down with elbow problems in late 2014, and they tried rest and rehab. Didn't work, and he had TJ surgery in March 2015. Standard recovery time meant he started his 2016 season a few months late. That accounts for virtually all of his missed starts.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    How so? Mauer gave a very reasonable rate of return on his contract. If anything, he's actually a pretty good example of a player performing very well in the first few years when a team most needs it, and still contributing in a reduced fashion in the last few years when later signings and younger players should be expected to pick up the slack.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Then why make essentially the same offer as the Brewers, just 3 weeks later? If Darvish was prejudiced against the Twins to start with, I don't blame them for ultimately not being able to change his mind. I do blame them, however, for not even trying (which the late Brewers match seems to represent). If you really want a job that other people are probably more qualified for, wouldn't you want to work harder and be more aggressive in your effort? Or do you just recycle your old resume, and show up at the same time as everyone else?
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    That's even more reason we should have been more aggressive with the money factor, though.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    The "we can't know 100% for sure" crowd seems to be offering that as a defense/excuse for the Twins, though. Like if someone criticized Granite for missing 1st base because, hey, we don't know 100% for sure the Twins wouldn't have come back to beat the Yankees! Just like I think it is fair to assume the Twins go on to lose that game handily regardless of Granite's mistake, I think it's fair to assume the reported parameters are accurate for the purposes of this discussion.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    Not really. 20.3 bWAR for Mauer, with a year to go. Doubt you will find an analyst who would say that's an unacceptable return on a comparable FA contract (or near FA extension). It's not Mauer's fault the Twins farm system was bone dry for the first half of the deal.
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