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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    I too think he needs to spend some more time in AAA, and there's probably no statistical benchmark to use for his promotion -- he just needs to be comfortable with and committed to some kind of approach. August 28th might be a little late to do it -- it's might be awfully hard to get much data from the season's final month to plan for 2017. Not that this team has ever appeared particularly concerned with data suggesting we need a better Plan A/B in CF...
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    There weren't really two "management changes." There was nothing but interim management until MacPhail was hired in August 1985, and his first managerial hire was Tom Kelly in 1986. Ray Miller was hired in June 1985 by interim GM Howard Fox, who was basically the 1985 equivalent of present-day Dave St. Peter. For all intents and purposes, Miller was an interim manager too.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    From the article: Apparently Dozier doesn't recognize the extent or cause of his "tough time." Molitor has given little indication that he recognizes it either -- he's sat, what, twice all year, outside his injury? He batted 7th for a week, went 3-for-21 with 2 BB and no XBH, and was back at leadoff after his team meeting Thursday.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    And before anyone tries to correct B-Ref, note that Buxton gets service time for the 10 days he was optioned in August 2015 because he spent fewer than 20 days on optional assignment last season. Hence why B-Ref says 113, even though Buxton was only on the MLB roster (or DL) for 103 days last season. And before anyone tries to correct me, I suspect April 3rd counts as "MLB Opening Day" this year even though the Twins didn't play until April 4th. Hence why I am guessing Buxton gets service time credit for April 3-24, or 22 days, before he was optioned on April 25th.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    See my edited post above. Calling him up August 28th would give him 36 more service days in 2016, leaving him at 171, one day shy of a full season.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    Not quite. According to B-Ref, Buxton was at 113 days before the season. They don't update service time in-season. Plus 22 days this year, he should be at 135 now. The recall date where we'd gain an extra year of service time would be August 28th. He may already be eligible for a 4th arbitration season (Super 2) after 2018. If he spends another week in MLB this year, it is almost guaranteed.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Also, setting aside the fact that the Twins are no longer really small market, comparing TR's past record to other past small market teams may not be the most instructive either. Who are we comparing to? As I mentioned above, Oakland and Tampa Bay have been pretty solid in recent history. The old regimes in Pittsburgh and KC were epically bad, two of the longest droughts in modern pro sports history. Milwaukee wasn't far behind them. Who else is in that group? Loria's Expos and Marlins? I'm not saying TR's record is bad, but I'm not sure he deserves bonus points for outperforming most of those franchises.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    I think that's fair. I don't think I'd fire any GM today. It will be interesting to see how both teams and their GMs respond during this season. Although I think TR might be safer, not only due to his relationship with the Pohlads, but also due to lower expectations at this point which he himself is partly responsible for.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Beane? He had an 8 year run of success in an often tough division, 1999-2006, a middling period from 2007-2011 but hardly a full rebuild before his 2012-2014 run. Tampa Bay? They are in a middling period now, but turned over pretty well from 2008 to 2013. I think Longoria was the only carryover starter between those two teams. And as you note, the "small market" designation probably doesn't even apply to the Twins, not since 2010 at least and probably going back to 2005 when Target Field was approved and our payrolls climbed and remained in mid-market territory. Teams like the White Sox probably become valid comparison points then. 5-6 year rebuild plans shouldn't really be in play for us anymore. Luhnow inherited a disastrous 106 loss team (and had nothing to do with its construction) which was 6 seasons removed from its last postseason appearance, and in a 12 year old ballpark. I'm not sure why we give TR circa 2011-2012 the same rebuild timeline?
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    See my post above -- isn't this a little like saying a 35 year old veteran player deserves as much time as, say, a 25 year old player? When the 25 year old has been better recently and the 35 year old wasn't even that great during his prime (think steady like Plouffe the last few years)? We know a lot more about Ryan, and while he did win some division titles, most of what we know isn't that good. He rebuilds slowly, his teams were almost never competitive in the postseason, he's done very poorly allocating the additional resources provided by Target Field, etc. As an aside, the Astros season isn't turning around as quickly as they hoped, and they've got a 4 game losing streak going, but they are 10-11 in May after having a 7-17 April. Still in last place but they're 5 games closer to the second wild card than we are, and they were actually within 3.5 games of that just a few days ago. (Also, given how bad we've looked, I'd be more inclined to believe the Astros have been unlucky by pythag or base runs in the early going, as opposed to the Twins who might be on the extreme where pythag or base runs might break down a bit?)
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    Actually, I think Luhnow should be on the hot seat. The Velasquez-and-more-for-Giles trade alone was highly questionable, even without the benefit of hindsight or Giles' poor performance thus far. That said, as others have noted, the entirety of Luhnow's record is the last few years, and it does include a competitive playoff appearance. In addition to the last few years of struggles, TR's record includes another slow rebuild from the 1990's, and a decade of regular season success from 2001-2010 that featured arguably only 1 competitive playoff appearance out of 6. If they were baseball players, we'd probably be pretty confident that TR's ceiling is low enough, and his career results modest enough, that replacing him right now isn't likely to cost us much. Luhnow might turn out similarly, but his shorter track record and more recent success could buy him a little extra time before we make that determination.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    Why since the turn of the century? How does it look when you include Ryan's first 5 seasons as GM? Starting in 2000 or 2001 seems like even more selective analysis than starting in 2010, 2011, or 2012 -- at least 2010 was the opening of Target Field and 2012 was TR's first season back as GM. There's also an argument that the game has changed enough in the last 5 years that those years are more relevant that 2001-2010. I think you have a somewhat valid point -- there were definitely achievements in the 2001-2010 decade, although simply counting regular season wins glosses over a few key facts, that the Twins were terrible in the postseason and (perhaps related) that the AL Central featured some of the absolute worst teams in baseball during that time period. When the Twins started 8-25 this year, I found that 35% of all MLB teams starting 11-22 or worse in the wild-card era were from the AL Central. Every year from 2001-2010 the AL Central had at least one of those terrible starts, except 2008 (when the whole division was bunched up) and 2009 (when Cleveland started 11-21 en route to 65-97).
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't dispute that. But Perkins' public comments about it hardly constitute "a class act."
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    That is generally correct, but it's a really blurry line between injured and ineffective. Perkins had a 5.89 ERA that year (2009) which was only getting worse. He was put on the DL on August 12th with "shoulder inflammation" (the same generic injury that DL'ed JR Graham for 15 days late last year), and was healthy enough to make a rehab appearance on August 29. There was absolutely an argument that he should be optioned at that point, and should be nowhere near the MLB roster during a September pennant race. Note that his settlement with the Twins did not restore all of that service time, so he still fell short of arbitration eligibility that winter. Even given his health, it was probably clear that Perkins was lucky to get 5 months service time for that 2009 season -- the Twins had a valid case for optioning him much earlier than they did.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Nor was Perkins a "class act" in 2014 when publicly ripped Josmil Pinto after his demotion: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/extra-bases/2014/06/17/glen-perkins-throws-josmil-pinto-under-bus/10674587/
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Sure, but since at least April 14 (David Murphy), the team has been trying to add a veteran outfielder. So the spot that opened up around May 7th wasn't really "open" for Beresford. (They also called up Polanco twice in April when they didn't have an open spot.) Point is, if they were viewing Perkins through a realistic lens, they could have managed this better. I think once again they were way too optimistic about how quickly Perkins could return and how much he could really help our pen anyway, and as a result we've sacrificed some development time/information for Kepler and Polanco.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    If you want to strip out other factors, perhaps using something other than runs would be better -- luck and sequencing can be especially big factors in a small sample like 2016 so far. Here are the Twins wRC+ figures by year: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2016&month=0&season1=1961&ind=1&team=8,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=17,a 81 wRC+ this year. Bad, but the team had worse marks in 1999 and 1981. Very hard to make a case that the 2016 offense is worse than the 1999 one, relative to league. 1981 is probably pretty much equal or worse too. Pitching-wise, Santana missed 2 starts, and Gibson maybe 4 so far. Replaced by Duffey, Dean, Berrios, and Meyer, they are probably not far off Gibson's 6.10 ERA performance anyway. Perkins has been the only injury in the pen, and again his absence might be a positive considering how he began the season. The effect of the defense is harder to quantify, but Sano appears to be the most "out of position" player, and it wasn't an emergency decision to put him out there, so they've had ample opportunities to mitigate it (spotting him at 3B or DH, defensive replacements, positioning, etc.). Fangraphs currently pegs us at 21st in fielding runs for the season, not far off last year's 18th rank when our ERA and FIP were a near match. In absolute terms, we're negative but still ahead of our 2013-2014 fielding runs numbers.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't like ripping on players for being hurt either, so I won't pick on Perkins or Hughes much. But at the very least, this is further evidence of a toxic clubhouse...
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, they could have done it a few weeks ago and kept Graham, or optioned Fien. Or a month ago, and kept John Hicks. Or at any time and added James Beresford to sit on the bench, and let Polanco play every day in AAA if they didn't plan to play him in MLB. (Or if they were really proactive, early in the season with a similar situation around Kepler.)
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    If this is a "historically" bad offense, what does that make the pitching/defense? I just ran the numbers of runs allowed per game for the Twins vs. the league since 1961 (MLB 1961-1972, AL 1973-present), and our 2016 runs allowed per game is the worst, 23.1% worse than the league. 1995 was next, 22.0% worse than the league, both of which were considerably worse than our next worst mark (2012 at 16.7%). For offense, runs scored, we're at 21.1% below league average for 2016. Our worst mark ever was 1999 at 21.5% below. 1981 wasn't far behind at 19.6%, and then comes the drop-off down to 2011 (16.7%) and 2000 (14.7%). So while both are bad, runs allowed seems to be worse historically. If you want to add our relative runs scored and runs allowed percentages, 2016 represents by far our worst combined season in franchise history at 44.3, which is rather historic. Obviously that should normalize a bit by season's end, as our previous worst was 2011 at 28.9, followed by 2013 at 27.5. In franchise history (1961-2016), 6 of our worst 10 seasons, and 9 of our worst 16 seasons in this measure have come under TR as GM. Rounding out the top 16 is the last season of Bill Smith (2011), the last two seasons of Andy MacPhail (1993-1994), the last 3 full seasons of Calvin Griffith (1981-1983), and the first full season of MacPhail (1986).
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    It wouldn't really matter to the team if he was on the MLB DL, except to Meyer's bottom line. He'd have an extra ~20 days of service time and MLB salary. As I mentioned before, I wouldn't be surprised if eventually the May 4th option was rescinded and a MLB DL stint was added retroactively.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    I know you are looking at May to compare to last year's May success, but I'm not sure it's the best way to highlight the 2016 team's offensive struggles, especially in the context of these 3 players. It's still not good, but the 2016 team is actually scoring more runs per game in May (3.8 RS/G) than they did in April (3.3 RS/G), despite the May struggles of the above 3 players. If the Twins run scoring rate of May continues for the rest of the season, we will finish with 603 runs, which would be 86.9% of the average team's current pace, again still not good, but ahead of 2011 relative to league, and comparable to 2013 too. The big difference in team performance between April and May 2016 is runs allowed -- a bad mark of 4.6 RA/G in April has somehow become an even worse mark of 6.1 RA/G in May! Even comparing May 2016 to May 2015, our runs scored have dropped by ~25%, but our runs allowed have skyrocketed by ~60%!
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Just eyeballing other years, the 1981 team was on a 557 run pace for 162 games, which is lower than our 2016 pace of 573 runs too, although the 1981 team average was again lower than 2016 so far, so 1999 is still the champ relative to league.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    For this to be meaningful, you've got to use runs per game (to account for season length) and adjust for AL/MLB average. 1968 was the legendary "year of the pitcher" with Yaz's .301 batting title, Gibson's 1.12 ERA, etc. The 1968 Twins were actually above MLB average in run scoring that year. The 1972 Twins were only a hair below league average too, scoring 94.5% of the average MLB team's runs (and 1972 was, of course, the year where offense was so bad that it finally prompted adoption of the DH rule.) The 2016 Twins have thus far scored 82.6% of the average AL team's runs. The 1999 Twins scored 686 runs, which was only 81.8% of the average AL team (839 runs), so that was actually a worse performing offense relative to league, even if the absolute total was higher than the 2016 pace.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    FYI, even if Grossman finishes out 2016 with us, he won't be arbitration eligible.
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