Otto von Ballpark

I don't think anyone has implied that. Folks are critical of the offseason pen plan, but I don't think anyone is under any illusions that it is the only thing that has gone wrong for the Twins this season.

Really? I'd guess most teams in baseball wind up with a cheap surprise performer like Boyer in their bullpen most years. Biggest strength? And unless you trust that reliever, or flip him for something, how much value are they really providing, even at a low salary? As much of a "diamond in the rough" that Boyer was last summer, the Twins didn't trust him to be a top setup man in the final months and thus had to make the Jepsen trade to attempt to stay in the race. And then they let him walk for nothing. Well, Capps was acquired because Nathan was hurt, and as effective as Rauch was, the team wanted a "proven closer" down the stretch. We still had an effective bullpen core of Guerrier, Crain, Mijares, etc. that year. But Hu was definitely dealt because we decided to roll into 2015 with the following pen: Glen Perkins Casey Fien Tim Stauffer Brian Duensing Blaine Boyer J.R. Graham Aaron Thompson (or Mike Pelfrey, pre-Santana suspension) And zero relief prospects particularly close to the majors. We certainly failed to develop a bullpen core, but we already knew that the past two offseasons. Still we made the decision to sit out the FA market, which cost us last year, and hurt us this year (even if that hurt was overshadowed by other failures).

They were forced to trade for Jepsen at the deadline because they didn't sign anyone better than Stauffer for the pen the previous winter. For that level of non-elite reliever, you have more leverage in an offseason trade -- see Benoit and K-Rod this past winter, very modest salary dumps.

High risk? Seems like the median contract among FA setup guys is something like 2/12 or 3/15. I guess if you build your entire bullpen that way, it gets kinda pricey, but no one was arguing the Twins should do that. There is very little risk in supplementing a weak bullpen with 1 or 2 guys at that price, though -- in fact, because we avoided that "high risk" of signing, say, Neshek for 2/12 in the 2014-2015 offseason, we wound up having to sacrifice Hu for the privilege of paying Jepsen 1.3/6.3 mil anyway. Sure -- except that's only how the debate has been framed by those endorsing TR's bullpen strategy. While ideally we wanted a lefty, we would have benefitted from bullpen reinforcements from either side the past few winters. And those reinforcements would not necessarily have to exclude Abad.

I keep reading the title of this article as "Would Eduardo Nunez Trade You?" I don't know the answer to that question.

Not to re-hash the whole debate, but another part of this is our inactivity carried over from past offseasons -- Neshek and Gregerson were suggestions from the previous winter, for example. Had we sealed the deal on one of those guys on a multi-year deal, we may not have needed to sign a FA reliever this past winter (or perhaps even kept Hu at the trade deadline last season, and avoided Jepsen 2016). And while free agents can be a crapshoot, isn't it kind of the job of GMs to identify the good ones? There's enough FA success that I'm not too comfortable patting TR on the back for repeated inactivity. I want a GM and a front office who can effectively use free agency as a net positive for talent/asset acquisition. (The Twins have obviously struggled with many of their non-bullpen FA targets, but that is a data point supporting a front office shake-up, not a data point suggesting we should retain the status quo but sit out the market more frequently.)

There were a number of Cishek proponents here, as well as Shawn Kelley. I mentioned Benoit as a salary dump pickup; K-Rod was another. Sadly I also mentioned Mark Lowe who currently sports a 10.71 ERA for Detroit, although his was a pretty modest commitment. I believe MLBTR suggested Madson or Soria for us, both of whom proved to be expensive but seem to be settling in effectively now. It seems those that focus primarily on Sipp and Bastardo were the ones who, like you, didn't think the pen needed much help -- the theory being that we had a lot of right-handers, and there weren't many good left-handers available. But I think those that said we were shaky from either side have proven to be correct.

It is not in a terrible spot right now, at least they have some new blood in there. Maybe they can flip Abad and identify some useful pieces for 2017 and beyond. Would be nice to see them drop Jepsen and audition another guy for 2017 (Chargois?). It is extremely unlikely anyone is going to take his salary off our hands anytime soon.

Buxton won't be out of options until the spring of 2019, at the earliest. I think that is fairly distant, at this point.

Then why did you remark upon it? Just kidding, I get the curveball comparison. I was only taking issue with the suggestion that Duffey's 9 starts were significantly more meaningful than Grossman's month.

Sano and Kepler? They'll have to pay more for imported beer and sausages.

I think the primary return in a Suzuki trade would be salary relief. He's not making a lot, but $1 mil a month is probably more than most teams care to allocate to a backup catcher. Given his history, I think TR would rather pay Suzuki $1 mil to play for us in August and hope someone gets desperate enough to take on his $1 mil salary for September, rather than grease the wheels by agreeing to pay half his salary on July 31.

MLBTR projected Abad's arb award at $1.5 mil this past winter. I'd guess he gets at least $2 mil, perhaps $2.5 mil if he final numbers are pretty good.

Not only that, but when a little cash might grease the wheels, and the Twins have a history of never including cash, it almost makes it necessary for TR to initiate the discussion about a guy like Plouffe.

9 starts is closer to 1.5-2 months, so it is a longer sample than Grossman and would probably produce fewer matches, but I think you are exaggerating the difference if you think Duffey's 9 starts are that much more significant than Grossman's month. I'm not a B-Ref Play Index subscriber or wizard, so I won't have a complete list of names, but just poking around, I quickly found Drew Pomeranz who had a 1.70 ERA after 9 starts this year; someone named Matt Andriese who had a 2.82 ERA this year after 7 starts and got bounced to Tampa's bullpen. Kendall Graveman had a 1.78 ERA for a 9 start stretch last summer; Nate Karns had a 2.54 ERA over 13 starts then too. Mike Bolsinger had a 2.25 ERA for his first 8 starts of 2015. For a Twins example, last year Mike Pelfrey had a 2.28 ERA after his first 11 starts. Sam Deduno had a 2.66 ERA over an 11 start stretch in 2013. Etc. Not saying these guys are all comparable to Duffey, but there is nothing that special in Duffey's 9 start performance last year to warrant a comparison with a HOF like Blyleven over the countless other pitchers with similar results over 9 start stretches.

As for 1984, Willie Hernandez winning both the MVP and Cy Young is almost by definition the weirdest award season ever, regardless of what happened further down the ballot!

You also have to remember, top baseball minds gave Palmeiro a gold glove when he only played 28 games in the field, and that was as recently as 1999. I would guess that 12 years earlier, in 1987, when they were considering their all-star roster, they still viewed Carter as an outfielder (indeed, he was never a primary first basemen before or after that year). Also, while Carter had the success of 1986, plus 20 HR and more RBIs than Hrbek at the break in 1987, Carter's batting average, like Hrbek's, was especially low for much of that first half, still under .240 just days before the all-star rosters were announced.

Problem is, those types of fans are going to complain no matter what. Actually Perkins saying that he is now overpaid and it is out of his control probably gave those fans more ammunition.

Okay, my comeback post. Agreed with this take. MLB contracts are guaranteed, everyone knows the general injury risk (which is already reflected to some degree in the contract value), and while there have been rare exceptions, it's standard practice for players to continue collecting the guaranteed cash even after injury. I would do it too. Perkins deserves absolutely no criticism on that front, especially if he can realistically return next spring. Calls for him to retire or donate the cash are not really valid. However, it's a little uncomfortable to keep collecting your salary under that pretense, while also saying that taking taking the cash in these circumstances makes you "sick", was your greatest fear when signing the contract, is out of your control, and is all you can offer the team and fans right now. Those things aren't necessarily true, and it's not standard practice for players to make that juxtaposition, although as we know, Perkins doesn't limit his comments to standard pro athlete ones, for better or for worse! I think I get the general sentiment behind his words, though. He wants to continue competing at the highest level of his profession for his hometown team. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Also, while B-Ref is fantastic, I find that Fangraphs is pretty sweet for viewing splits like this for the whole league. For a modern metric view, note that Hrbek was only 4th in AL among 1B in first half wRC+ in 1987 (setting aside Dwight Evans, who accumulated most of his 1B time in the second half that year): http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=1b&stats=bat&lg=al&qual=y&type=8&season=1987&month=30&season1=1987&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=17,d 5th in oWAR. 2nd in HR, but only 3rd in ISO and SLG, 7th in RBI, 10th in AVG, etc. Joe Carter was actually primarily a 1B that year too, and he had 20 HR and 67 RBI at the break.

Cool article, Bill. I didn't know the Hrbek all-star story, and I love these kinds of exercises. While first-half splits are a decent shortcut, they're not a good snapshot for when the rosters were actually decided. They were announced on July 9, so only stats through July 8th were known at the time. Not a huge deal, but it closes the ERA gap and widens the W-L gap between Viola and Hurst a little bit, for example. Although actually, while rosters were announced July 9, they were probably put together in the preceding weeks, and here we can see a few more trends. As of July 1st, Hurst actually had a better ERA than Viola, and a notably better W-L record too (9-5 vs 6-6). And Viola's best performances were more recent, as his season ERA was still above 4.00 into early June, while Hurst's season ERA had been below 3.50 since April. And past history is important too -- while Hurst being a Red Sox player was no small part of the equation, he also had a 2.99 ERA the previous year (1986), while Viola had a 4.51 mark, looking more like an innings eater that year and in 1985 than an all-star level performer. Viola's most recent "all-star" level performance was way back in 1984. Similar trends can be seen looking at Hrbek vs. Tabler. Tabler actually batted .326 in 1986, 4th in the league, and in 1987 he was at in that range again through mid-June, before dropping to .308 at the break. At the beginning of June, it appears Tabler was basically neck-and-neck with superstars Boggs, Puckett, and Trammel for the AL batting average lead. Meanwhile, Hrbek's 1987 season average dipped as low as the .220s in mid-May, and even as late as June 18th Tabler had a higher season OPS than Hrbek. After that, Hrbek had 9 HR over 15 games, but I suspect the decision to favor Tabler was already largely made. Also, I wouldn't underestimate the importance put on batting average in 1987. And I think some of Hrbek's complaint is because he wasn't looking at this own numbers in the context of the lively ball that year. 23 HR at the break would have led the entire MLB in every other year of Hrbek's career to that point, but in 1987 it was only good for 3rd place in the AL, and 7th in MLB, with a ton of ~20 HR guys right behind him.

I've wisely decided to retire from this thread.

I wasn't suggesting it to him. I generally don't post here in an attempt to communicate with the players. I am just discussing the situation with fellow fans.

Also interesting, Perkins is in his age 33 season -- Radke retired after his age 33 season with the same basic injury, no? Although Radke had banked more coin by that point, and his contract was up so he didn't walk away from any guaranteed cash. I don't blame Perkins for trying to come back instead, especially since his odds of a successful return could be a bit better as a reliever. I wish him and his family the best.

It was kind of a clumsy statement to that effect. Repeatedly invoking money, saying that getting paid for not contributing was out of his control. Seems like he was trying to deflect anticipated criticism as well as deliver his heartfelt message.