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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    You might want to pick up that mic. Obviously they are different people and very different styles of hitter which influences these numbers, but at a lower level of play (and most consider KBO lower than JPPL), it's much easier to out-perform the league by a wide margin, so these relative differences aren't all that meaningful above their already-understood different hitting profiles. Also, according to B-Ref, Nishioka was 4.6 years younger than the average JPPL player in his final season there. Up until that point of his career relative to the KBO, Park was a below league-average hitter overall. Again, different people and very different styles of hitter, and Park should transition better simply because it would be difficult to fail as badly as Nishioka, but I don't think it's wrong to acknowledge they were acquired in a similar manner (same team, same posting system, similar salaries), and faced a similar general transition.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    Let's not ignore the posting fee. Still not a whole lot of money, $6 mil AAV, but his next 4 years (total) basically involve the same financial commitment as Nolasco's next 2 (total). Which in Nolasco's case, could be enough to adversely affect roster decisions around him.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Nishioka sure didn't seem like a diva when he returned cash to the Twins to terminate the contract. Seems petty to trash talk about him after that (and the various Twins misjudgments that contributed to his American career).
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    Non-zero chance is better than zero, but it's also not as good as a likely chance. And the "cheaper price" is pretty much irrelevant. The Twins don't need value in that spot in the pen to compete, they need performance. At Abad's salary, 0.5 WAR will be great "value" but I'd rather have Lowe or Benoit and a better chance at 1.5 WAR even if it's worse $/WAR. (I wasn't as enthused about Bastardo, I could be convinced to pass on him with an aggressive plan for Rogers, but I would have taken him over Abad for sure.)
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Is he? In the article I linked, Molitor is "most concerned" about Sano's health as he transitions to full-time outfielder. I suspect he may see more days off than you expect. And if it's not directly Nunez over Sano for those 20 games, it is Nunez over Sano/Park/Arcia/Vargas/etc (guys who would take Sano's spot while he covers 3B), and while each has their flaws, you would be able to take your pick of the hottest bat at the time, not necessarily locked in to Arcia if he's performing at 2015 levels, etc. Not to mention, with Nunez at the primary backup, this will probably make us more likely to let Plouffe play through an injury too. Maybe Plouffe will start 150 games at third with a 100 OPS+, when he could be starting 140 with a 110 OPS+.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    The Twins are often cited as straight shooters, I doubt Molitor's statement has anything to do with inflating Trevor Plouffe's trade value. And if helping Trevor Plouffe's trade value played any role in the decision to start Nunez over Sano for 20 games this year, then it would be an epically bad decision indeed.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    By wRC+, Sano was the 9th best hitter in MLB last year (min. 300 PA). The notion that Sano's offensive game needs help like that of Santana is laughable. As is the idea that a full-time shift to a position he's never played before is "simplifying" things for Sano's benefit.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Huh? 20 games is 20 games. We just missed the playoffs by 2-3 games last season, a year where we left Sano in the minors for an extra 3-4 weeks, during our worst month, to give Vargas "one last chance" (and to start Mauer virtually every day).*** We know how important these decisions can be, I don't know why we'd knowingly make ourselves weaker for 20 games (for a rather esoteric benefit of helping Sano play defensive catch-up in the OF after we denied him experience there in past seasons and even this offseason). *** Between June 8th (Correa's call up) and July 2nd (Sano's), 22 team games, we lost 6 by 1 or 2 runs. In our starting lineups those 6 games: Mauer (5) Vargas (3) Nunez (2) Robinson (2) Santana (1) Escobar in LF (1) Now tell me how we're better off playing Nunez over Sano for 20 games in 2016 so Sano can have a season-long defensive crash course on playing RF...
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Pujols has been regularly cited as an example of shifting a great young hitter to a new position, to justify moving Sano to RF. Well, Pujols was shifted all over the diamond for his first 2 seasons, a lot more than just sprinkling regular backup 3B duty in with a starting RF gig. Not sure these guys really need exclusive reps in the OF to maximize their value/benefit to the team.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    A lot of folks are suggesting the Twins pushed Sano out of the DH spot to help control his weight. Wouldn't it be a fantastic way to control his weight to require extra work to stay prepared for both RF and 3B duty during the season? Plus, you know, the side benefit of trading 20 Nunez starts for 20 Sano starts...
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    The Twins haven't traded a non-pending FA starter midseason in years. I also don't recall the last time one of our starting position players went on the 60-day DL. I'd guess the odds of either of those things happening is, what, 5%? In other words, Sano isn't playing 3B this year. And Nunez will probably get ~20 starts there.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    I think people are missing how exactly this hurts the team. We finished within 2-3 games of a playoff spot in 2015, and could be in the same mix in 2016, and just promised Eduardo Nunez ~20 or so starts at 3B. (Plouffe has started an average of 132 games in the field the past 3 years.) And from Molitor's talk about keeping Sano healthy, there's a decent chance that he will be parked on the bench a similar number of games for rest. This isn't about not trading Plouffe and reconfiguring our roster, this isn't about some issues down the road in 2018. It's most immediately about a sub-optimal deployment of our current roster, in a year where every marginal win could be critical.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    I'm not sure that's the proper characterization either: http://m.twins.mlb.com/news/article/165347848/twins-all-in-on-moving-miguel-sano-to-outfield I'd say that means Sano is at best an emergency 3B option for 2016, one he hopes to avoid. We will probably Escobar or even Santana at 3B in 2016 before we'd see Sano there.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    Seth, teams rarely if ever publicly say a player "can't" do something. That's a negative judgement of their abilities. So you're asking for an impossible level of evidence here. Teams often imply the above behind a statement that a player "won't" do something. I think that is what we are seeing here with Sano.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Wouldn't they have taken the spot tentatively reserved for Abad?
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    I think you dramatically overrating the difference between giving up talent for a 4 year deal and signing a guy to a 6 year deal.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    I am not saying Ervin or Mauer are likely to improve, but they are both under contract and likely to be worse in 2018. If they have a last hurrah, it could come this year or next. No expert is going to predict anything with confidence for overall team performance in 2018 at this point. Maybe with a club at the depths of rebuilding like the Phillies right now, but certainly not a team coming off 83 wins and projected near .500 again. At this point, they really truly are just as likely to have some good fortune and win 90 in either 2016 or 2017 as they are to neatly progress from 75 to 85 to 95 over the next three years.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Ervin Santana, obviously. C'mon. I'm not using those guys to say the iron is hot. I am saying there is a good chance they will be better in 2016-2017 than in 2018, which you don't seem to be factoring into your argument that it's all an upward trajectory toward success in 2018. Things are rarely that linear.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    If you are thinking about a 1.5 year rental, like Price for the Tigers in 2014, the 2017-2018 FA SP class looks pretty thin too: http://www.spotrac.com/mlb/free-agents/2018/ As for a longer-term acquisition midseason, I know it happened with Hamels, but that's pretty rare, no? Very hard to count on that opportunity. And if you expect Buxton, Sano, and Berrios to be part of our MLB club soon, I'm not sure that we'll even have the elite prospects that might be necessary to force a trade for, say, Jose Fernandez.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    This cuts both ways, though. What if Mauer has one or two more good season in him, but you're not willing to spend until he's on his very last legs in 2018? What if Park starts out hot as a rookie but cools as the league adjusts to him? How is Dozier going to age? Plouffe? Santana? Etc. Whatever speculative improvement you forecast for 2018 is almost certainly balanced by others getting worse before then, or by luck/injury/etc. You can make a case against signing an ace like Cueto this winter, in fact I'd probably agree, I never really advocated for his signing. But I absolutely hate the argument that "we're not that close to winning right now." We won 83 games last year and have multiple top prospects hitting MLB, we're as close to winning as most MLB teams. If you are waiting for a year when you are likely to win the World Series, you are going to be waiting forever because no teams are ever likely to do that, they get there by assembling a good foundation, taking chances to improve it, and luck, all of which applies to the 2016-2017 Twins just as much as any other present or future club.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Not necessarily, if they moved one of their current starters. Might not be so easy to rent an ace this summer. Check out the scheduled FA SP for next winter: http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2015/03/2016-17-mlb-free-agents.html
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    If we're rebuilding again in 2018, 4/85 on the books isn't going to matter. And we'd have made a better effort to win in 2016-2017 before the thing (apparently) collapsed.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    When you first said "total bust" I thought that seemed strong, I always associate that with guys like BJ Garbe who pretty much flame out immediately and you wonder, how the heck did we pick him? Stewart has done enough in his first couple years that I think he is out of that territory. Still could wind up a bust as far as MLB contributions, which probably isn't that rare even among picks in that #4 range. Agree that this year will be very important.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    If it was just injury with Nolasco, I would be more understanding. But it feels like more than that. And he seems very un-Twins like in personality, which suggests the Twins indeed targeted him more out of desperation than aggressiveness, which is a bad way to operate in FA. I get the impression they had the same basic offer out to multiple FA starters that winter, namely Nolasco, Santana, and Garza. Nolasco was the first to sign, then the other offers came off the table (only to return later, modified/reduced). Just knowing his history and upside, I probably would have put a lower offer out to Nolasco, closer to the Jason Vargas deal (4/32), and pushed harder to land Santana. Better to get the guy you really want for a little more than you want to pay, than to get a guy you don't necessarily want for exactly what you are willing to pay.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    And the fact that they've never had a "baseball guy" in the #2 GM spot under TR is pretty good evidence of the other claims made here. Heck, TR already retired once, saw the organization get messed up a bit with a non-baseball guy in command, came back with an interim tag, and later stepped aside briefly due to health reasons -- and we STILL haven't got a "baseball guy" in the #2 spot!
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