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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    I'd agree with "better odds" but how much better? It was probably a net of 1-3 players, depending on how you value some of the pieces. At meaningful outcomes (i.e. better than marginal relievers), the difference based on quantity is probably negligible. Could easily be washed out by 25% playoff odds.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    Depends on what the plans are. Selling for minor league depth doesn't seem like it's necessarily worth chasing either, at those odds. Buying with minor league depth wouldn't make much difference in long-term plans either. The 2009 Twins trade deadline is an interesting parallel.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    I guess a better way to express it, rather than age, would be signing date. The deadline used to be later. Owings, Lindor, and Harper didn't even sign until August 11/15/16, respectively. Lewis isn't really doing something they failed to do in their first year, so much as they didn't have the chance. And actually, Mike Trout did get promoted to the Midwest League in his draft year, on September 1st. And he signed about 2 weeks later than Lewis, so it's roughly an equal accomplishment, I'd say. Of course, pointing out the other circumstances around his promotion is hardly being critical of Lewis. Still an outstanding group of comparables!
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't know if I want the FO paying that much attention to day-to-day odds. By the same measures, a week earlier, they were more like 6:1 shots. And per Fangraphs Depth Charts, that was with a very pessimistic .464 projected rest-of-season winning percentage (worse than every AL team but the White Sox), despite a .505 winning percentage at the time: http://www.fangraphs.com/coolstandings.aspx?type=2&lg=div&date=2017-07-23 And even when they were 16:1 long shots, it was almost entirely because of the Royals winning streak. On July 23rd, Fangraphs was projecting the Royals finishing at 82 wins, with a 3:1 shot at the postseason. On July 30th, just one week later, they were up to 85-86 wins, and ~60% chance at the postseason. If you didn't believe that was an accurate snapshot of the Royals true talent level, then you didn't really have to buy those 16:1 odds either. I think the more reasonable assumption was that the Twins, despite their short-term ups and downs, were always within sight of 81-82 projected wins which has them at ~25% playoff odds today, along with a few other undistinguished clubs (including the Royals, Mariners, Angels, etc.).
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    With the playoff berth locked up, Cedar Rapids is guaranteed to play through September 7, and their playoffs could extend to September 21st or so if they advance to later rounds. The GCL Twins could make their playoffs too, but their season ends earlier and the playoffs are much shorter. Probably the longest it could go would be around September 7. So I suspect this decision might involve lengthening his season, and getting him acclimated to the Midwest League before playoff time arrives. Still, that should have benefits going into 2018 too -- maybe that promotion to high-A will come all the sooner?
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    To be fair, Lewis was a few months older when drafted than Correa, Lindor, Harper, Trout, Grichuk, Owings, etc. So them starting the next season at A ball wasn't that much different than Lewis getting promoted there now. Not that Lewis is particularly old or anything. A few lower round picks (Jon Singleton, Jake Bauers) seem to meet this criteria too. Still, I'm glad to see it with Lewis!
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Sounds like some are arguing to judge Belisle's season more on WPA/LI -- that way he won't get excessively penalized for blow-ups. He's at 0.21 WPA/LI right now -- which is a tick above average (zero), but it's only 7th on the Twins, behind Kintzler, Rogers, Duffey, Pressly, and even Hildenberger and Gee: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=0&type=3&season=2017&month=0&season1=2017&ind=0&team=8&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=12,d Another measure would be Fangraphs shutdowns (SD) vs meltdowns (MD). There he has an argument for being the 3rd best Twins reliever in 2017, behind Kintzler and Rogers, but nothing particularly special in a league-wide context -- useful to keep around, but not necessarily worth promoting or relying on further.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    It was 0.69 bWAR at the time of the trade. By bWAR, it was a top ~20 relief performance in the AL, not exactly the kind of thing contenders usually trade away. So it would seem most teams value that as potentially difference-making. (Plus, Kintzler has actually out-performed that pace so far by 0.5 bWAR with Washington, which could have made a top 10 relief performance in the AL as of today.) Also, the difference you are describing -- Kintzler or no Kintzler -- is between standing pat and selling. But the complaint here is that we didn't buy when we had the chance -- we could have added another player at the deadline, plus keep Kintzler. Joe Smith and Anthony Swarzak were cheap and have already posted 0.3 bWAR each for their new teams, for example. And as a bonus, getting Smith would have kept him from Cleveland, or getting Swarzak when the White Sox were ready to deal him (July 26) could have helped mitigate some of the 3 walk-off losses we experienced between that date and the trade deadline.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    I am not sure if you are underrating Kintzler, or overrating the August trade market, or both...
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    Belisle also has 4 unearned runs allowed (the 3 run HR after an error mentioned earlier). His RA9 outside his 4 blowups was actually 1.65 before last night's game, and now it is over 2. As of yesterday, Clippard had only allowed 1 UER, and Benoit 0. Belisle did a good job for awhile there, but I really don't want my club to rely on him as much as they are right now. Remember Belisle had great ERAs the past 2 seasons too, but it was lower leverage work... I suspect there was a reason for that.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think you noted that specifically, no. The point of your lost seems to be that the exercise might have some meaning for Belisle, no? I would guess Belisle has one of the bigger spreads, but other relievers will benefit massively too. Just picking a name randomly from the ERA list near Belisle, Tyler Clippard's ERA improves from 4.27 to 1.87 when you drop his 4 worst games. And he was dumped by the Yankees to neutralize salary in the Frazier/Robertson deal... Joaquin Benoit, 4.40 to 1.90.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    The Meyer issue was burying him in the pen, and then sending him to AAA immediately after his one start, much more than it was the quick hook in one start. Meyer threw a lot of pitches that inning.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    I will let drjim speak for himself, but his determination is not final either. It's probably based on the fact that Enns is a lightly regarded 26 year old making his MLB debut. Not every player deserves equal leash in their MLB debut, or any game for that matter.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    Did you all miss the near grand slam by Aguilar? Enns had enough evaluation opportunities for one night.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    He said "I just don't see how anyone can determine the viability of a player after such a small sample." That's not what Molitor was doing last night, he was trying to win a game. Enns' viability will be determined by his full body of work.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    You just did it again. Molitor isn't making any meaningful determination on Enns, he is just trying to win a single game. If Gardy had pinch hit for Kubel in that 2004 playoff game vs Rivera, it would have been because he was struggling and he wanted to win the game. You don't need to give players the biggest possible sample size every game.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    He's not getting released, he is getting pulled from a game. Enns will have more opportunities to show he is better than the current scouting consensus. But in the meantime, we want to win games.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Again, no one is saying it was only that week. We are not discussing possible long term memory loss in the FO. But the week was a decent sized factor. I will repeat: if the Twins did a soft buy now, it would be influenced by the past week as much as their soft sell moves at the deadline were influenced by the previous week.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Now you are conflating this with individual outcomes. Sure, it was unlikely at points for Boshers to make MLB, but teams come up with Boshers-level replacement performances all the time. Reminds me of past debates that argued the Twins pulled off a scouting/development win by getting Tonkin in a late round and seeing him reach MLB. Sure, Tonkin individually beat some odds as a late round pick to reach MLB, but teams have occasional late round picks reach MLB, it's not a particularly meaningful occurrence on a team level. Not that there is anything wrong with Boshers or Tonkin or the team using them, but you can't really use their modest performances to date as evidence of the Twins acumen. It's really just part of the baseline for MLB orgs.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    Didn't say it was a hard buy. And by your own definition, they left the flexibility to go another direction, which they did, after a week of negative results. I didn't think this was a controversial point. A soft buy on a Kintzler or Belisle type reliever would be roughly equivalent as a change of course from a week ago as the Garcia trades.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    The first Garcia trade suggests otherwise.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Hmmm... now you like the taste of pie in the sky, eh?
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Did I say otherwise? The original poster said, don't make a trade based on the last week. My point is, the Twins already did that (and a lot of people patted them on the back for it around here). FWIW, since those streaks, Cleveland is 3-5 and KC is 3-8. We haven't played particularly well in that time either, but we've made up 2.5 games on KC and the second wild card spot.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    By "possible" I wasn't just inventing fairy tales. KATOH projects Watson at 2.6 WAR for his career, and that could be giving him the benefit of the doubt (his stats seem better regarded than his scouting?). Kintzler had 1.3 WAR for 2017 when we traded him. A reasonable projection might have been 0.7-0.8 WAR for the rest of the season. In a pennant race, that could be huge -- and yes, it could be the difference in making the playoffs or not. Imagine if the 2015 Twins had "traded" Perkins at the deadline (instead of losing him to injury). That could have easily been another ~1 WAR difference, and while we finished 3 games out, we were only 1 game out entering our final series, and we punted our last game after elimination. (And our bullpen took the loss in our elimination game too.) That 1 WAR could have re-made that entire stretch run. Also, trading Kintzler wasn't required to give young arms a look. And while I am not opposed to contributions from young players at any time, a good FO should be able to evaluate young players without using a pennant race to do so. And arguably the Twins FO has already done that -- if the FO believed in these young guys, they would have been up already, no? Kintzler was not blocking anyone. No one player is usually "the piece that is going to put a team over the top" but that doesn't mean it necessarily makes sense to trade those players for lotto tickets. It can be defensible, but it's hardly a slam dunk. I think the 2017 Twins are an edge case -- yeah, we're not in a great position, but Kintzler wasn't bringing back some special return either.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    I was simply commenting on the fact that they bought (Garcia), then a week later sold (Garcia and Kintzler). The FO seemed to believe that something changed in that week, even if you disagree.
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