Otto von Ballpark
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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark
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I mean, I don't mean to say I'm overly concerned with health, but Marwin Gonzalez is likely first in line for playing time in case of injury. Behind him might be Cave and Adrianza. Prospects could enter the picture, likely in the second half, but Arraez was pretty special in 2019 -- I'd expect most prospects, even those rated much higher than Arraez, to have a bit more difficulty in their first taste of MLB. We're also a club that had an offensive force at catcher in 2019, and catchers are pretty volatile in the health department, both for frequency of injury and scarcity of good replacements. So we're more susceptible to regression at that spot too. -
Our pitchers already allowed the second-fewest HR in the AL in 2019. Compared to, say, Houston or New York, It seems the "Bomba Squad" may have benefitted from the lively ball disproportionately in 2019, on both sides of the ball. (And Buxton is one of our biggest health concerns too, which cuts into his projected value as a defensive asset.)
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Don't get me wrong -- I'm optimistic too. But it doesn't take much to make regression cases for most of those guys. Health and a less lively baseball could have impacts on most.
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Berrios is here through 2022 regardless. And what if Berrios doesn't want to sign a reasonable extension? We've got what appears to be a pretty darn good core right now -- we can prioritize winning in 2020-2022 a bit more than winning in 2023 if we want. And Donaldson's deal certainly doesn't handcuff us for 2023 or anything either, even if he is a DH by that time. We guaranteed a 38 year old DH $14 mil for 2019 too and it turned out pretty well.
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I think his numbers at Target Field were likely more related to the Twins pitchers from 2013-2018 than anything special about the ballpark. Otherwise we could still probably sign Jose Bautista too and get good Target Field performance, even adjusting of age.
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I appreciate the enthusiasm, although Story and Gray both have 2 years of control left for the Rockies. (They are on one-year arbitration contracts for 2020, but are still arbitration eligible for 2021 too.)
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To be fair, a year from now, some in that list may make us go "meh" again.
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FWIW, Marwin had his crazy outlier career year at the plate for the 2017 Astros too...
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I appreciate the effort, but most pitchers aren't Buehrle. They are often happy to slow the game down, just like most batters. I don't want *any* players being able to set the pace of the game, that's the problem.
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Kepler to Castellanos in the outfield would be a huge defensive downgrade, though. Likely wiping out much of the gains from Castellanos' hitting. (And it's no sure thing Kepler would be a good first baseman either, at least not right away -- he hasn't really played there in about 5 years. He only had 76 games there in his whole minor league career too.)
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Any mention of Marwin Gonzalez in the report? Marwin was among the Astros batters who knocked Darvish out of the second inning in both games 3 and 7 of the 2017 World Series, despite a largely ineffective postseason at the plate otherwise.
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I suspect Logan Morrison may not exactly be reliable source here, but... If the Astros sign stealing pre-dated 2017, then Jason Castro would have known about it when he came over here. (Maybe even Grossman, if it really dated back to 2014.) (Note that Cora and Beltran did not join the Astros until 2017, so this is one of the iffier parts of Morrison's claims.) For the post-2017 stealing, Marwin Gonzalez would have known about it when he came over to the Twins last winter too. And I wouldn't be so quick to assume that all the Twins are "clean" either. It may not have been as wide as the Astros did it, but if the practice was common enough around the league as Logan Morrison says, it's certainly possible that individual Twins sought it out too.
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But wasn't this FO largely responsible for the "one starter under contract on Nov. 1" situation in the first place? By this logic, their 2019-2020 offseason would have been worse if they had managed to trade for Stroman at the deadline, or extend Odorizzi earlier, or sign Corbin last winter, etc. I think they've dealt with it adequately, at this point, but again, it's a situation of their own making, so I can't really give them extra credit for their work since Nov. 1st.
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Why is Nov. 1 the date of comparison? Virtually every team in baseball is "improved" now compared to Nov. 1, so it doesn't seem like a particularly meaningful distinction.
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FWIW, if the QO stays the same after 2021, it's possible we could have wound up with 2022 control at similar cost to his 2022 salary and 2023 buyout. Edit to add: not that this is a bad deal for the Twins -- it's likely pretty fair for both sides. I don't think Sano was necessarily looking at a big FA payday anymore.
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I wouldn't necessarily call Thames a comp yet either, but Thames and Sano had virtually the same number of PA last year. Thames had more games but he was appearing a lot as a pinch hitter in the NL. I wonder if the better comp might be someone like Castellanos? He's been a pretty good hitter the last two years, but his market is pretty limited due to position and defense.
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This is a non-factor. The current CBA is in effect through the 2021 season, when Sano was scheduled to reach 6 years service time and free agency anyway. Edit to add: although we did effectively buy out 2 FA years when you consider the 2023 option.
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The "foreign professional" cutoff is actual 25 years old now -- a few years ago, they upped it from age 23 plus 5 pro seasons, mostly to suppress Ohtani's eventual contract. Shouldn't much matter for Colás, who's only 21, turning 22 in Sep. 2020. And I don't think the Twins have much left in their 2019-2020 bonus pool, do they? This article suggests they may only have about $600k left, although I haven't been following it too closely: https://www.mlb.com/twins/news/international-prospect-signings-july-2-2019
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The international signing rules changed with the start of the 2017 signing period. Before then, teams could exceed their allotted bonus pools and incur penalties. That's how Moncada and Robert and others signed big contracts. But starting in July 2017, the bonus pool became a hard cap, and teams were no longer allowed to exceed it. That's why Ohtani had to take a much smaller bonus when he signed in Dec. 2017.
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Also worth noting, despite being tabbed as a potential "two-way" player, Colás has never pitched professionally. And he's already 21 years old. Hard to imagine a development path where he's anything more than a reliever on the mound. And as noted above, his batting stats were primarily from the Japanese minor leagues. (Although I guess the more time he takes to develop as a hitter in the US minor leagues, the more time he could develop as a pitcher too.) By comparison, Ohtani was batting *and* pitching in the Japanese *major* leagues by age 18, and turning in star performances at age 19.
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But players who have already done well through age 33, like Donaldson has, tend to do pretty well at ages 34-37 too. I've linked this before, and it's good reading on the subject: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-to-expect-from-josh-donaldson/ To summarize, Donaldson's historical position/performance comps at age 33 and ages 30-33 had the following average performances from age 34-37: 34: 3.4 WAR 35: 2.9 36: 2.1 (but 3.0 median) 37: 2.4 There's still risk in this or any contract, of course. But "mid-30s age risk" is actually a lot greater for the guys *younger* than Donaldson, whose mid-30's are still a few years away and whose performance might fall off significantly before they even get to age 34. For example, Longoria's bat started fading by age 31, etc.
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Why would you assume that when Wolfson reported $80-85M?
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FWIW, MLBTR estimated 3/75 for Donaldson, and the Fangraphs writer McDaniel estimated 3/71. If he's asking for 4/110, that's a ~50% increase in total value over those, although only a ~13% increase in AAV due to the extra year. (And of course, he might only be asking for 4/110 hoping that someone counters with 4/100, rather than 110 being his actual valuation of himself.) I guess the Fangraphs crowdsource was 3/60 but those generally seem lower / more unreliable than the "expert" predictions so far this winter.
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No aging pitchers? Does that mean we could only trade for (Dorian) Gray?
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Perhaps this was facetious, but you aren't allowed to trade newly signed FA right away. (I think the rule is May 15th or so?)
