Otto von Ballpark

I don't think this is true. In practical terms, I have never seen an MLB team withhold cash sent to pay part of a player's salary in a future trade (and cash has been involved in a lot of deals). In technical terms, I think such a practice might throw off luxury tax calculations too? I think the money is tied to the player in the proportion decided by the teams.

I think by "buyout more of", the poster meant pay more of Nolasco's salary in trade. We likely could have dumped him somewhere else by picking up ~$13 mil, by my estimation (at which point he'd basically be a flyer like Bud Norris circa last winter).

The Angels are paying Nolasco $8 mil next year. The Twins will likely pay Santiago about $8 mil if they tender him a contract this winter. To the teams they could hypothetically be traded to in the next year and a half, they carry virtually the exact same financial obligation. (I guess the Angels are also on the hook for Nolasco's $1 mil option buyout)

I was going by the Angels saying that Meyer's MRI was clean now, not trying to project it. Obviously his health could get worse, but if it's clean now, I think he's probably worth something approaching $5 mil. I'm really skeptical of any analysis that puts Busenitz on equal value footing with Meyer. If Meyer is down in those value depths, it's because of health concerns, which isn't really the same as not having the talent/pedigree. No one was going to buy Busenitz as a lotto ticket for anything close to $5 mil. I'm trying to be balanced, I'm not trying to do best case for the Angels and worst case for the Twins. But the fact is, the Twins don't really have a great best case. It would be hard for Santiago to pitch better than he already has, which is his realistic path to extra value. It would be hard to Busenitz to come completely out of nowhere. But on the other hand, it's not that hard for Nolasco to improve, nor is it necessarily that hard for Meyer to contribute if he can just stay healthy for a bit.

You think the Angels made a major mistake with this trade? I'm not so sure they passed on significantly better offers for Santiago. And as bad as he's been, Nolasco has been eating innings as well as (or better than) Santiago this year. And his performance hasn't been that disastrous recently -- even without looking at FIP, he's got a 82 ERA+ this year, compared to, say, Edwin Jackson's 60 when the Cubs started to give up on him a couple years ago. Or even, Ubaldo Jimenez at 63 this year. Kevin Correia had an 81 ERA+ in 5 seasons starting when we signed him for 2/10. It's a serviceable level, even before you look at any potential to get better (FIP and change of scenery).

I too am surprised that Nolasco was dealt at all, but given the parameters of this deal, maybe we shouldn't be that surprised. Nolasco had $17 million remaining on his deal; I didn't think he'd really have to be released for nothing, since he was healthy and at least eating innings, some other team would kick in at least a few million to take a flyer on him. My ready example has been Bud Norris' $2.5 mil contract this past winter, and Nolasco was eating innings better than Norris circa 2015, and any team acquiring him in 2016 would get a bit of a head start at trying to fix him too, so maybe we could bump that up to $4 mil if we wanted to dump Nolasco now for pure salary relief. Well, we actually dumped him on the Angels for $9 mil salary relief. We also got the chance to offer Santiago arbitration, but that might actually reduce our return, if Santiago's trade value doesn't increase or if he's not fully worth his ~$8 mil final arbitration award (if he's a potential nontender, and Joe Saunders circa 2011 is a decent nontender comp, that could be the case). So about a difference of $5 mil over what we could have reasonably been expected to get for Nolasco as a pure salary dump. Setting aside Busenitz (who looks mostly like a depth piece), that could mean we effectively sold Meyer for about $5 mil, which is probably the going rate for a prospect even of his present suspect caliber. Arizona sold Touki Toussaint for about $10 mil last year; Pittsburgh kinda sold McGuire and another iffy prospect for ~$15 mil in salary relief (Liriano's remaining guarantee, minus what Hutchison should make in arb). If Meyer's MRI was clean, he was probably worth $5 mil to try to put something together through his final option year. So maybe we shouldn't be so surprised? (Just spitballing here, not trying to be fastidious and pernickety!)

That trend line has been going steady for 2.5 years. I don't think another year will push their values that much further apart (especially if you neutralize their salaries, which the Twins did by including cash in this deal).

Sure, although I wonder if they would have still pulled the trigger on just Young for Garza. I don't have enough confidence in Bill Smith to conclude that Bartlett was ultimately required to make the deal (it was fairly early in that offseason too).

I agree "F" is probably too harsh, but Milwaukee's negotiations with Cleveland were "totally dead" by Sunday morning, ~28 hours ahead of the deadline. Plus, I suspect not all of Lucroy's suitors were taking a "Lucroy or bust" attitude (unless they simply didn't like any of the other available catchers, of course, but that's a separate issue than whether we had enough time to strike a deal).

You know, Tampa once traded a young "performing" position player to the Twins for a young pitcher, back in the 2007-2008 offseason. I think if you have significant concerns about the future performance of the position player, you can consider them just like any other asset in acquiring a pitcher.

I generally endorse the trades too, but I'm curious -- what exactly do the letter grades mean? Brandon has them A, B+, and A-. What would a "B" trade look like? C, D, F? A+? Just curious.

Maybe, if you could get him that cheaply, but Gray has had a much more troubling season than Archer. I wonder if it would even be worth the effort, especially since we'd only get 3 years of control at arb prices.

Buxton is "performing"? Sano I will grant, even if he's slumping he performed well in MLB pretty recently, but Buxton? I get that it's still not a large sample, but it's been large enough and bad enough (and his injuries frequent enough) to suggest we're probably not going to get as much surplus value from him over the next few years as we had previously expected. If he still has enough potential to headline a trade for Chris Archer, you'd have to consider it, no?

I didn't think it was belabored to respond when you wrote that Santiago is "likely to fetch far more value than Nolasco". That just doesn't seem true given the information we have, even if the rest of the deal's benefits are a net win. And your same post didn't just say the deal was a "net win" but rather a "coup". I even quoted that section of your post, which I thought made clear that I was disagreeing with the words and content in that section of your post, not some other different/general conclusions around the topic. I'll drop it now, although I'd appreciate if you'd ask for clarification next time you think I am inferring something as silly as Nolasco having more value, rather than immediately adopting a mocking tone toward a point I likely am not making.

Although I'm still not exactly sure what else we could get this offseason for an extra $8-9 mil, or an extra $15-16 mil if you non-tender Plouffe too.

And Hughes, who started as more of a bounce back type but we too quickly tore it up to go in between.

You might be right. At first it seemed like an aggressive non-tender barring injury or collapse. But I did find a non-tender comparable -- Joe Saunders after 2011. And we just saw that Santiago didn't fetch a lot at the trade deadline. The non-tender and $8 mil savings strategy does seem like a more likely path to Twins benefit than Santiago's value increasing over the next year. (Actually, I guess it could be $9 mil savings, since the Angels are apparently on the hook for Nolasco's $1 mil buyout for 2018.)

I've saved paper tickets too (for the benefit of my future biographers charting my whereabouts), but I love the digital ones for convenience. Buying/selling physical paper tickets is no fun. They can and do print you a paper receipt for your digital ticket at Target Field -- this is what you show the ushers when you want access to your section. (At least, that's what happened when I had a digital ticket for a nice seating area, I can't remember if I got a paper receipt for the cheap seats.) It wasn't a very nice looking receipt, however! If you have kids, and you want them to feel involved by handing over a paper ticket on entry, you could probably just have their digital ticket scanned on your phone, and tell the ticket-taker to pretend to scan/check whatever paper ticket you gave to the kid too (maybe an old one, or one you print yourself). Bonus: you can give the ticket to the kid far in advance, with no fear of the kid losing it!

Thanks! Yes, Berardino talked about it on Twitter, and it looks like he just confirmed it in no uncertain terms: https://twitter.com/MikeBerardino/status/760841429140672512 If so, my pedantry about it has been rewarded!

Fair enough. I guess I see the Braves and probably the Reds as having no chance in 2017, while the Twins have some kind of chance. But another way to look at the question, is maybe the Twins increased chance in 2017 isn't big enough to qualify as "contention", and somehow the Braves win that race in a future year. Still don't see it, but it's an argument that could be made.

I wondered about that too, but more knowledgeable minds than I have advised me it's basically a team option, despite the word "team" not appearing in the reportage on the deal.

How much would you guys be willing to pay Ramos? Seems like Washington might be willing to bid him up, they are definitely in win-now mode and it doesn't look like they have an internal replacement. And of course they'd be the one contender that wouldn't have to surrender their first round pick to sign him (although they would be losing a comp pick that wouldn't be far behind).

Yeah, I was intrigued by McGuire too. At first I thought he was more or less just another Stuart Turner, but McGuire has always had very low strikeout rates, which is perhaps a skill that will translate better to MLB than Turner's advantages in minor league power and walk rate. And he's 3 years younger than Turner, and doesn't need Rule 5 protection until after the 2017 season. Wouldn't hurt to keep talking to Toronto, but I wonder -- should the Twins have been talking to Pittsburgh? Perhaps we could have eaten Liriano's $17 million to acquire McGuire and the other prospect?

How are the Braves not mentioned? The Twins shouldn't even be in that conversation, really -- we obviously won't be favorites, but even if one guy like Berrios emerges, I think we have enough solid pieces around that to be relevant. It feels like the Braves and Reds would need more than one guy to reach that level, which suggests they are further away.

No, I am not suggesting that. But evidence suggests that Nolasco plus a few million dollars will probably generate a roughly equal return to Santiago, which is in direct contraction to this statement of yours: I think it's a decent trade for the Twins, just to move on from Nolasco and clear a 40-man roster spot (although Busenitz will be Rule 5 eligible if not added this winter), but clearly here you are trying to assign it bonus points for Santiago's future value which isn't at all clear. Any time you think about assigning a player future trade value that's well above what he was just traded for, I think that deserves a note of caution. I remember reading similar opinions on this site of the Fuld-Milone swap, among others, which was also a solid trade by the Twins because we needed Milone more than Fuld at that time. But there was no great future value to Milone, even when he matched his career high with a 104 ERA+ the following season. (At least Milone offered two more years of potential control, should he have somehow developed more value.) Often the assumption of future value comes along with the stated or implied conclusion that one GM just made a huge mistake, which sometimes happens, but not nearly as often as claimed. Most MLB trades are pretty good proxies for near future value, particularly when they don't involve talent/potential extremes (i.e. star-level players or top prospects). I hope you don't mind that we have discussions that aren't simple binary "good vs bad" trade -- I think the more interesting aspects of these transactions are often the nuances.