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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Cool it, funny guy. I never once said that TR was personally scouting players, and if you continued reading the next couple posts you would see that was explicitly clarified after a polite response from another poster. I'm not sure if your "jokes" at my expense were particularly worth posting the second they came into your head.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    If all it took to run a competent MLB front office was signing players based on published rankings, the Twins could save a lot of money! Seriously, I think it's fair to hold the Twins front office to a higher standard than that.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Maybe the Hector Santiago basket has a beard trimmer? Perhaps if you agreed to pay for a portion of Nolasco's basket, and send along Alex Meyer's basket (complete with "shoulder lotion"), you could get Santiago's instead?
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    The goal shouldn't be to "deal Plouffe", that's the problem. The goal should be to answer questions about our young players before we have to make decisions about them this winter. Well below that ranks the goal of finding someone else to pay Plouffe his $1.2 mil salary for September. I won't even address the fantasy of acquiring valuable talent in return for him (still too many decent 3B available for too few openings, same problem as last winter). He should be on waivers today, and if he clears, we should attach a note to him that says we'll pay his August salary in trade to deal him immediately.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    1. Modern waiver trades yield virtually nothing. We would be lucky to have someone take on the final month of Plouffe's salary ($1.2 mil), which may be not be as valuable as answering questions about the young players heading into the offseason. 2. and 3. We could waive or cut Plouffe now and sign him back in the offseason if we really had an opening. Or if the 3B market is as weak as you say, we can find a Plouffe alternative easily and cheaply enough if that's what we want. You could apply the same arguments to Milone. Both can be useful in the right circumstances, but given where they are currently priced, they are just not that useful to this club in August 2016, nor irreplaceable in November 2016.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    Milone will be a big test case. Since he was being moved to mop-up duty in the pen, he really should have been put on waivers on Monday and been gone by today (outright or released) if he wasn't claimed. Plouffe should be in a similar spot, although they will probably want to start him when he returns hoping to build value. And it's not just the MLB guys. I don't expect to see many guys added to the 40-man roster yet this season, guys like Jones, Wheeler, Baxendale, etc. if those decisions are indeed being left to the new full-time GM in November.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    There aren't that many "really compelling success stories" or we probably wouldn't be in this position today. I suspect you could put a chimp who can read BA's pre-draft rankings in charge of the draft, and staff the minor league coaching spots somewhat randomly from within the industry, and you'll still wind up with a few "really compelling success stories" on the level of Tonkin over time.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    The other issue, which Mike hints at, is that not all "big" signings are equal. I know the international market is still very much a crap shoot (perhaps in more ways than one ), but the Twins could be honing in on the wrong "big" signings, in addition to the wrong number/mix of "big" signings when limited by our pool. A team going over it's pool can still sign guys for $300k the following two years, so if you were really not planning to spend $500k on any one player this year, it might have been wise to break the pool last year? And if it's really a crap shoot, being limited to $300k isn't that big of a deal.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    I didn't mean to suggest that Ryan would do anything deliberately, but if he was sensing the end (and maybe this predates June, or May), he might unconsciously have been less aggressive (although TR hardly needs an excuse to do that ), perhaps out of a feeling of being a "good company man" and wanting to leave options/flexibility for Antony or another successor. He did walk away well before the trade deadline, after all. And I know he doesn't do the international ground work, but he directs it and ultimately approves it -- maybe a scout came to him with an opportunity to go bigger late (maybe someone's agreement with another team fell through) and he shied away from approving it? Maybe he didn't make a push to sign those guys released from their Red Sox deals? I have no great confidence that any of these things are true, of course. But they wouldn't surprise me.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    I do like the general idea of this thread, though -- we might want to time the waiver request for when our preferred trading partner would have priority.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, there is a gentlemen's agreement not to claim a player unless you are blocking a rival, but I suppose Santana might be an edge case as non-contending teams could want to acquire him for 2017-2018. I've seen it suggested by another poster that when a player goes on waivers, teams could contact the Twins before making a claim. If a team like Oakland or the Angels talked to the Twins and had no interest in meeting our asking price, they'd probably pass on making a claim, leaving us to negotiate with contenders instead.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    Does Molitor's "Favorite Things" basket include Danny Santana? And the "bunt" sign?
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Plus the AAA season ends in a month, and then Buxton is back in MLB anyway. I guess you could let him finish on a high note by ending in AAA, but it would still probably be a low note because he'd still have his lingering poor MLB results hanging over him all winter. Probably have to tough it out in the majors and hope for some signs of progress.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    FYI, Minier and Diaz have yet to make it out of rookie league ball. Looks like they are teammates of Kiriloff in Elizabethton: http://www.milb.com/roster/index.jsp?sid=t576
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    I think there are ways to evaluate our performance in this arena other than waiting 6-8 years. Not that we have the best insight into it from afar, of course, and it's hard not to wonder what was going on this summer. It was apparently sometime in June when TR was told he wasn't coming back, and a month later he decided he didn't want to be a lame duck. I hope none of that carried over into our July 2nd activity or lack thereof -- reports also suggest that TR kept it a secret pretty well (i.e. Antony didn't know), but it's hard not to wonder if TR shied away from approving July 2nd aggressiveness this year, either in quantity or quality.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Actually, there might be reason for Hildenberger to be in AA. There are probably about 6-9 guys ahead of him in MLB/AAA evaluation priority right now (guys on the 40-man roster, or guys that could be lost this winter).
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Couldn't the injury thing play strongly into issue #2 (evaluation and development)? The Twins by their own admission were not properly factoring health into their draft selections prior to 2012, it's quite possible that they still aren't doing it well or that the weakness extends into the development side.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Fair enough, sorry I haven't followed the thread much to this point. Agreed on the rest of it. I don't think it was solely money that left the team so ineffective/absent from the international market prior to the 2007 or so, and while increased money/signings/facilities since then are nice, odds are some of the root causes of our old international deficiencies are still present in other areas of the organization.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think the issue only manifests itself in playing time, or criticism of work ethic, although those can be bits of public evidence around the problem. I think the culture plays a role in general development too. If the young Latin player doesn't fit the quiet, scrappy mold, it just causes extra friction.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    The Twins issues with Slowey and Perkins were over specific management decisions (bullpen and/or minor league assignments, IIRC). Those conflicts exist with all baseball players since time immemorial. They don't really have any relevance to general problems working with Latin American players.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    The 16 pages of discussion contain a modest debate about the value of the deal to the Twins, including the "so what" post you responded to. I don't think anyone in this debate so far deserves to be mocked for "expecting an ace" in return for Nolasco.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Should Melotakis count as a "power arm"? I'm not predicting future greatness for Jones, but it feels like maybe the Brewers made a mistake on this one? Looks like they had to the perfect opportunity to keep Jones with minimal effort, first half of the season on the DL, second half active on a team well out of playoff contention. Will be interesting to see if we protect him this winter, or I guess the Brewers or someone else might get another Rule 5 crack at him.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Although they could just "spend it to spend it", that is, spend the leftover amount less carefully just to use it up later in the signing period. It's like a draft -- sure, every team may make the same number of picks -- no team is just going to quit drafting 10 rounds early -- but that doesn't mean every team has a good, thorough, effective draft strategy. It's hard to say exactly what they're doing from afar, but I don't get a great sense of plan or direction in their international moves to date. (Which kind of applies to a number of areas in the second TR regime, frankly).
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    I haven't followed this thread, but I will interject that it doesn't have to be an intentional bias. I would be rather surprised if the Twins (and a few other teams) didn't have an unintentional bias in these areas, the Twins perhaps more than most because they've made a number of coaching changes in the last ~5 years yet haven't added many/any Latin Americans to their staff, suggesting they may not even recognize it as a problem worth addressing yet. (It's a big thing I'd like the new GM to look at, and hopefully Antony is already giving it greater consideration than TR apparently did.)
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    Of course, on the day Plouffe went on the DL earlier this year, we had a 4-9 record. And we proceeded to go 4-9 again without Plouffe.
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