Otto von Ballpark

I love that projected line, but note it's only worth 1.9 WAR. Fellow KBO signee Hyun-soo Kim is projected at 1.7 WAR, and he's an actual corner outfielder signed for 2/7. Could we have gone after him instead and avoided the whole Sano to RF situation? (And saved some cash/commitment as a side benefit?) Note these Fangraphs projections currently have Sano as an average defender in RF, probably due to lack of data? I know many have said Buxton's dWAR projection here looks low, but combined with Sano's, it's probably a net wash for the team. As for Park's defense, I remember reading he covered 3B a little bit in Korea last year, which might help support the idea that he is more than capable at 1B. Or at least that his Korean team tried to convey that to gullible Americans like myself in advance of selling him.

Honestly, I think it was as simple as matching up our hispanic pitcher and our hispanic catcher. Not quite sure why, maybe Deduno was one of the few pitchers willing to throw to Pinto? I think management's opinion of Pinto was already well formed by that point, so it didn't much matter, but it wasn't a shining moment for the club.

Not necessarily true. A number of catchers changed teams in the 2014-2015 offseason. I wouldn't have faulted the Twins much for trying and failing to land one, but after extending Suzuki in July, they didn't even try to address the position further until recently.

I believe we are also promising Kaat a chance to start.

Interesting you bring up Cuddyer and WAR, as Cuddy was rather notorious for poor defensive metrics dragging down his WAR. He routinely lost a win or more per season, and only peaked at 3.1 WAR overall. I mean, Sano is a better hitter than that, so 4 WAR after that defensive penalty is certainly possible assuming he can stay healthy, but it seems very unlikely that such an arrangement will be optimal for either the player or the team. Like Cuddyer, the negative defense easily has the potential to outweigh the -0.5 WAR positional penalty from moving from RF to DH.

Fangraphs has wRC+ for both MLB and minor leaguers, which is really nice for comparing guys across disparate hitting environments, like the PCL and FSL. It's not perfect (in the minors, I think they just adjust for league but not specific park) but it is better than raw numbers. I really wish they had something similar for minor league pitchers, but ERA- and FIP- seem exclusive to MLB players at Fangraphs right now...

Is "limited range but making the routine plays" the right threshold here for success, though? And how can anyone really forecast that, at this point? I am sure many once thought Delmon Young would be just fine in the outfield too, but it turns out he would have been far better at DH if his offense could have sustained it.

Raw OPS probably isn't a great measure for a player coming out of the PCL, and I also wouldn't use "throughout" to describe an offensive performance that has been up and down. wRC+ of 85 in his AA debut, 84 in his AAA debut, then 69 in his second AAA season definitely overshadow past stronger performances in the lower minors out of college (shades of Fryer?). Wouldn't be surprised if Hicks is forever overmatched at the plate in MLB, but with a strong defensive rep he is certainly a worthwhile 3rd catcher for this organization right now.

Thanks all for the reports!

If Hicks could only play one position and we signed a player for 2/12 to start full time at that position, shortly after benching and demoting Hicks, then yeah, I'd say we were probably giving up on him. I think it is revisionist history to say that Pinto was ever viewed as a future plan or potential MLB starter catcher. Remember he was actually left unprotected as a minor league free agent before he elected to stay here and had his 2012-2013 breakout in the minors. And when he got promoted and nominal MLB reps at the position, it was basically when we were scrambling at the position after Mauer's concussion. At best, he was probably viewed as a potential Doumit replacement, which was a spot/need that didn't really exist anymore once Mauer shifted. Sorry I have no idea how this tangent started anymore, but my motto is leave no tangent unturned!

Lots of guys "get looks" in spring training, doesn't mean they are future starting plans. Again, I am sure the Twins were hoping Pinto could do something, by spring 2015 that something was probably just backup catcher and PH/DH. As far as a starting catcher, they had already obviously moved on from Pinto as an option with his quick demotion and the Suzuki extension in 2014.

Read harder. In the very post of mine you quoted, I said he was GOOD FOR A CATCHER. What do you think that means? I understand the relative difference in offense between positions. Indeed, rather than ignoring position, the purpose of my post was actually adding the positional qualifier to a claim made by another poster. OPS+ is a perfectly fine way to measure a catcher's hitting, as long as you understand average for catchers is below 100, which I do, hence my post. You can even use it to measure pitcher's hitting, knowing that the pitcher average will be way under 100. But just like we say "good hitter for a pitcher", the same can be said of catchers, because they are not necessarily "good hitters" in an absolute sense without positional context.

30 games at the end of 2014? Pinto got 8 MLB starts at catcher after June 2014, 2 at DH, and 4 pinch hitting appearances. I have no doubt the Twins hoped for better from Pinto, but it's fairly clear they never really expected him to be better. As soon as Suzuki looked like a viable starter in early 2014, they shuffled out Pinto and never really looked back.

Good thing no one said that. Seriously, go back and read my post, I specifically said he was a good hitter for a catcher, although below league average overall in OPS+.

Why did you ignore the most recent example of catcher? This team clearly never trusted Pinto even on the level of Casilla, Valencia, etc.

I think the "wearing down from his workload" angle is usually just an excuse that a coach or manager usually offers to cover for a struggling player. If they really believed it, they wouldn't have worked him so hard in meaningless games down the stretch in 2014 after giving him the extension. And of course, if you press them on why didn't they rest him more, they will credit the player for being a "gamer" (and not in a Lew Ford sense ).

Suzuki was never that good of a hitter in MLB, he was always below average in Oakland by OPS+. "Good for a catcher" at his peak doesn't exactly bode well for his innate hitting skills as he ages, regardless of workload and usage.

With the posting fee, it averages over $6 mil per year. The Twins would be loath to cut that.

And I'm not sure how meaningful your splits are anyway. According to B-Ref, Suzuki only had a .591 OPS up the middle, so if there was any under-performance going the opposite way, it was likely balanced out by an over-performance pulling the ball (easily possible given the ~80 PA sample in each).

How could we sign Lachlan Wells, but not his twin brother for the same amount? Talk about a cool story!

I'm excited by Park too, but there's still a large downside to this deal. He's got a lot to prove, but his contract basically necessitates an immediate starting job and likely a season's worth of starting at-bats. At the same time we're trying to convert Sano to the outfield. At the same time we're trying to evaluate (and perhaps showcase) Arcia and Vargas. And it's not just simply Park pushing out a current player, or making out outfield defense worse via Sano. Imagine if Sano gets hurt again like he did last year, where he's healthy enough to bat but not play the field. Not unlikely especially if he is learning a new position. (A similar possibility exists for Arcia, if he wins a corner OF job.) Then you might have to bench Park right when he's in the process of adjusting to MLB. Does that set him back? Does that leave you not knowing what you have in him going into the 2016-2017 offseason? This could be a tricky situation to manage for quite a while.

No doubt he caught a lot of games from 2008-2011, but that feels like too convenient of an excuse. He was a 91 OPS+ hitter from ages 23-27, he's been 79 from 28-31. Almost all of that has been a drop in power. And even if it was influenced by his heavy workload from 2008-2011, and if offseasons before 2012, 2013, and 2015 didn't help, it doesn't seem likely that it can be reversed by an extra couple days off per week in 2016.

Actually, shouldn't that be "had Suzuki only pulled or gone up the middle and never walked or struck out"? Which strikes me as worthwhile a hypothetical as guessing his batting line in a world with unicorns...

See my post above, I don't think framing this as Pressly/Tonkin vs Boyer specifically is correct. I have nothing against Boyer, and if the Twins liked what they saw in the spring, he certainly showed enough early in the season to warrant a spot. The problem wasn't Boyer specifically, but the 6 vets plus 1 Rule 5 guy opening day bullpen construction, where the marginal "been there before" benefit of each successive vet chosen over Pressly/Tonkin/etc. was less and less. A couple other notes: Pressly didn't get hurt until July. Boyer, Duensing, Stauffer, even former minor league signee Thompson were all picked over him in April. I have no problem citing the injury as a question mark entering 2016, but looking back it should have no bearing on the decisions made prior to July 2015. In their first crack at MLB in 2015, Pressly picked up 3 wins and 3 holds in May, and Tonkin got 5 holds. Outside of Pressly's narrow extra inning loss to Detroit, neither blew a lead or contributed in any notable way to Twins losses. Their reward? Pressly wasn't brought into a game tied or leading for a full month before his injury, and Tonkin didn't see another MLB appearance of even average leverage again until September 19. Very hard to say that either failed any kind of MLB performance test in 2015, they were hardly given the opportunity. And what opportunities they received, they performed. As many projected, they easily matched or exceed the present day contributions of multiple "been there before" veterans rostered ahead of them, and even their modest future value obviously exceeded the zero future value of same said veterans. Calling into serious question the value of the Twins veteran bullpen construction strategy.

You will forgive me if I don't fully trust your subjective remembrances of the 2015 season when you seem to be confusing Pressly with Graham in this discussion. I have no idea who are responding to here. Clearly I have never suggested anything like this, in fact I've gone out of my way to say the opposite, that Tonkin and Pressly don't need to be potentially dominant to offer more future value than someone like Boyer, Duensing, Stauffer, etc. It's also not necessarily Pressly/Tonkin vs. just Boyer -- all of those guys (Boyer, Duensing, Stauffer) were picked over Pressly last April, and over Tonkin, Rogers, etc. beyond April too. My argument isn't that Boyer specifically needed to be replaced, or that all of those guys needed to be replaced, but that the Twins were stocking way too many of those guys for too little total present/future benefit.