Otto von Ballpark

How so? We would have had to draft Giolito instead of Buxton, no? Seems like we could have still gotten Berrios at #32.

True, and wRC+ at FanGraphs tries to correct for that. Still, Arcia's career OPS+ and wRC+ are the same, 101.

Don't worry, I don't think the Twins were planning on taking on a ton of salary while trading our guys anyway...

Or, just put Ramirez back on waivers again. The 7 worst teams in MLB passed on him just two weeks ago. And as we know, the 8th worst team claimed him, only to waive him again about 10 days later. Decent odds he might have cleared this time and could have been outrighted to AAA. (And if he didn't, obviously our interest in him wasn't too great since we passed on him the first time around too.)

Well said. I probably came off as a little hard on Perkins in the other thread, but shoulder injuries suck. If it was an elbow, one could make a case they waited too long -- that surgery is generally not a career-ended in modern baseball. Shoulders are a different animal, though. Does seem like someone should have forced more rest and rehab earlier, namely the second half of last season, and of course we should have added another reliever in the offseason so both Perkins and the team wouldn't have felt as much pressure to not open 2016 with Perkins on the DL. He had enough issues last year and in the spring that we would have been justified in doing so, if the ultimate goal was to avoid shoulder surgery.

Doesn't have a great eye at the plate? Sounds like he is a perfect fit on this team, unfortunately.

It's hard to get too worked up about this right now, like the Perkins surgery, it's been a long time coming. Not a lot of strong parallels to the Ortiz situation, except it does seem to be another example of the Twins having trouble developing or relating to young Latin American players (and young sluggers in general). And we cut both to add a second utility player to our bench. Ortiz was obviously a better performer at the time we cut him, I believe Ortiz had a minor league option left, and his second year arb salary made it more likely we could pass him through waivers if we wanted him off the roster but still in the org for depth.

Good point on the pitching staff. I attended a game last week where Molitor used 3 consecutive relievers to face 1 batter each, throwing a total of 6 pitches: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIN/MIN201606080.shtml Having a 13 man pitching staff in a lost season is far from a necessity (same for multiple bench players whose primary positive attribute is positional flexibility). God forbid we fall below .300 winning percentage again because we can't use multiple relievers for one batter each, or someone has to play out of position for a few innings...

That is fair. Didn't quite mean it to come off that way. But I think a pitcher who is getting paid to use his arm in a highly unusual manner is quite a bit different than a generic employee at a generic company. If an ailing pitcher really doesn't want to consider surgery in a timely manner, he can always retire and rest band rehab on his own time -- no one is forced into surgery. (I don't really think Perkins falls into that category, speaking more generally.) It seems Perkins is trying to have it both ways too. Last year he was gutting it out, pitching through pain, risking his health for the team and the game. This year he gets bonus points for being cautious and showing consideration for things beside baseball? But infinitely more than Perkins, I blame management for counting on him this year. That was an atrocious off season bullpen plan for a team hoping to contend.

I am not sure it is that big of a difference when it is three years in the future. I suspect most all-stars with 3 years control remaining, especially those in the 30s, don't immediately get extensions beyond that out of a team's fear that they could lose an all-star in 3 years. A lot can change in 3 years. Would you have extended Guardado when he became an all star? 2 years later we were able to get Nathan in trade for a spare part, Rincon moved to the pen successfully, Balfour came up, Crain was drafted and quickly came through the system, shortly thereafter we found Guerrier and moved him to the pen, etc. Now the current Twins have more financial resources than those Twins. But I don't think extending veteran relievers who already have multiple years of control is the best way to leverage those additional resources.

Actually, Perkins didn't rest and rehab much last year, to the team's detriment. It was about 10 months ago when they knew something was wrong and Perkins was removed from the closer's spot. What's a reasonable amount of time to try rest and rehab? Not to pull out the salary card, but Perkins is pretty well compensated, and the Twins had already guaranteed his compensation during any surgery recovery period. Doesn't he then have a duty to more promptly report his injuries, and be willing to consider surgery earlier? I don't mean to sound cold, I sympathize with anyone who gets hurt, but I'd have a little more sympathy like you describe for a young pre-FA player, or a pending FA without a guarantee or safety net. As it is, Perkins trying to avoid surgery basically cost the Twins a year of his services on top of a presumed year of surgery recovery.

The new TR seems constitutionally incapable of accepting surplus value from a deal...

Also, it's not quite true that Hechevarria was the best thing from that trade. They obviously got a ton of salary relief, plus they flipped Yunel Escobar for Derek Dietrich, and Henderson Alvarez gave them a couple decent years. They are a weird franchise, but grudgingly I have to admit they've generally done some things well enough to generate some good players, change directions, and hang in there.

Sure. I think the other poster's issue with the Marlins was more with Loria the owner, and his revolving door for managers, GMs, and free agents. Otherwise, on the baseball side, it would be hard to put them definitively behind the Twins. They seem to be pretty good at drafting and development, and probably have the best chance of hanging in the race this year among the teams we are discussing. As far as future liabilities, beyond this year, they only have guaranteed money tied up in Stanton, Gordon, Yelich, and Chen, which isn't bad. (And Stanton's deal is the only one for megabucks -- that could be an interesting opt-out discussion after 2020! I think Loria is banking on scaring him away before then...)

Tangential question about Nunez: what happens if his helmet comes off and interferes with a fielder or a ball in play? I noticed this possibility on a couple plays recently, one where his helmet bounced in front of the first baseman fielding a throw while Nunez was trying to beat out a grounder, and again last night where it bounced in front of the second baseman while Nunez was running to second on a Mauer groundout to second. This link suggests it would remain a live ball unless the umpires rule there was intent to interfere: https://m.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/2sdded/becoming_an_umpire_need_help_with_a_question/ But it happens so consistently with Nunez, even on routine plays, that losing his helmet seems to be an intentional act, and I think an umpire or the league would be warranted in warning the player and team that any interference from his helmet would be ruled intentional. I hope the issue comes up during a pennant race this year.

Obviously it's subjective. And you can certainly put the Twins ahead of the Padres, Diamondbacks, and Marlins. But that's splitting hairs. The fact is, we're not even discussing the Twins performance in relation to an average or median team, we're only discussing them among the worst. Which isn't a good spot for us given our records the previous 5 seasons, not to mention TR had ample time to prepare a better plan of succession than what transpired in the Bill Smith era...

I get that 2012 was largely a product of the Smith era, but 2016 is a safe distance away and it is by far our worst season yet. Our 2016 record has everything to do with TR's allocation of resources since 2011, and little or nothing to do with Bill Smith.

True. How many seasons have the Twins been in contention during that time (2011-present)? One, 2015. How about the other teams on the list? Braves 3 MIL 2 CIN 3 AZ 3 SD 0.5* Miami 0 COL 0.5* Twins 1 * means I gave half-credit for competing in a poor division until July 2013. A couple teams might hang close in 2016 yet too. So by this measure, the Twins are maybe the fourth worst. What was the Sporting News ranking again? Oh yeah, third worst. Quibbling about the exact rank is missing the point. The Twins aren't in a good group.

Technically, Beane is no longer the GM, although he was promoted up the ladder. And if Oakland had as a bad of a run as the 2011-2016 Twins, in addition to their playoff futility, yeah, I think you'd have to consider changing the guard there as well. As it is, Oakland under Beane went 17 seasons without ever winning fewer than 74 games, and when they finally did that in his 18th year, losing 94 games, they re-organized the front office a bit (although keeping Beane, and promoting an internal candidate to GM albeit one who had been a GM candidate elsewhere). All while continuing to play under Metrodome-era facilities/payroll/revenue restrictions. No one is arguing today that the Twins need a front office shake-up because of our playoff futility alone. It's our playoff futility plus our recent overall futility, among other issues.

Not to pile on, but another thought occurred to me while pondering transactions recently: I think Ortiz still had a minor league option available when we released him. Best as I can tell, he was added to the 40-man after the 1996 season, and was subsequently optioned in only two years, 1997 and 1999. (In 1998 and 2001, his minor league appearances were only for rehab while he was on the 60-day DL.) http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/david-ortiz-player-transactions Teams get at least 3 option years on players, though, and Ortiz was still short of 5 years service time so he couldn't refuse an optional assignment. I don't think those rules have changed since 2003 -- I know 3 option years was still the standard at the time because LeCroy was out of options (having used them in 2000-2002), and not long after the Twins optioned Rivas and Lohse in 2005 and 2006, respectively, when both players had over 4 but under 5 years of service time like Ortiz circa 2003 and couldn't refuse the assignment. Even accepting that the 2003 Twins were on a tighter budget in the Metrodome era, Ortiz's projected arbitration salary in 2003 was not a materially larger portion of our 2003 opening day payroll than, say, Milone's salary relative to our 2015 payroll. So it appears this was another path to retain him. (Also, the fact that Ortiz won a MLB roster spot on a contending club in Boston, despite having a minor league option remaining, implies his value was a touch higher than his part-time role in Boston originally suggested.) Regardless of budget, it has been exceedingly rare for TR and the Twins to cast aside a healthy pre-FA player for absolutely nothing when they are meeting an average performance threshold (which Ortiz was clearly doing). TR and the Twins have always viewed such players as potential assets, even if they have to get a little creative to retain them near the end, like Lohse, Rivas, and Milone. It appears the decision to release Ortiz, when we still had $2 mil to spend later on Kenny Rogers, and to release rather than non-tender so we couldn't even try to re-sign him at a lower rate -- it appears it was influenced more by culture and personality than the Twins have ever admitted. And it's probably related to the trouble the Twins had in Latin American markets prior to Sano, and difficulties developing such players and sluggers in general that seem to persist to this day.

Great point. We can quibble about various moves and non-moves, but at the end of the day, I ask: what has my GM and front office added to the team? In the areas where there is the most GM influence and discretion -- trades, free agency, and extensions -- it's hard to dispute that TR and the Twins FO have had net negative contributions to the franchise, for a significant length of time (5+ years), compared to their peers. They've made a fair number of bad moves, and it seems every modest good move they've made has been followed by a bad doubling-down move. Are they the absolutely worst? Probably not. And they may not have a "signature mistake" on the level of Josh Hamilton, or trading Swanson for Miller, either. But they've been bad enough, long enough, that they are clearly in the bottom tier and probably should not be tolerated much longer. And that's without wading into the harder-to-define issues with prospect development, where the Twins don't seem to be doing particularly well either.

You're ignoring the fact that if the rest of the team collapsed in 2016 or 2017, we could have flipped Lucroy again ourselves for prospects.

Why are we citing less than half a season FIP for relievers? It's a terribly small sample of innings, and not particularly meaningful to their performance. And signing any of those FA relievers would not have precluded also adding Abad. (And Abad only has 1 more year of control in arbitration.) Not to mention, if the Twins had actually invested in the bullpen earlier, when many on this board called for it, it's possible we would still have Chih-Wei Hu and not be stuck with Jepsen's salary this year. And plenty of the reliever suggestions from this board have out-performed Jepsen too: Neshek, Gregerson, Madson, Cishek, etc.

One good year, one bad year, and nothing meaningful so far in 2016 -- better than Nolasco and not meaningfully different than Hughes. Garza has the same remaining guarantee as Nolasco, and much less than Hughes. Like Tulo, Shields was dealt with a ton of salary relief (~$31 mil). Nobody is on the hook for $42 million for Shields after this year. And as I recall the consensus about what "prospects" to offer San Diego was pretty light, probably no more than what the White Sox gave up.

The Blue Jays only took on ~$53 mil in extra salary obligations in that trade. Saying the Twins would have had to take on the full $109 mil is disingenuous at best (as is claiming "a couple top prospects" were offered -- I think the discussion was primarily centered around Gibson, plus perhaps one good prospect but likely not Sano/Buxton/Berrios). Pretty sure Ellsbury was primarily advocated by one dude on this board. And Ellsbury is only under contract for 4.5 more years, not 6.5 as you state. (I am noticing a pattern of exaggeration...)