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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    I think they'd like that, and we'd obviously all like for those new guys to step up, but I'm not sure it's an honest evaluation of those chances that is driving our inactivity. In fact, their 2015 approach with Rogers and other past bullpen moves suggest they're content to count less on potential excellence from our youth, and more on mediocrity from vets. (Also, Melotakis hasn't thrown a competitive pitch in 17 months, with 16 innings at AA as his highest previous level of experience. No level of "secret weapon in our instructional leagues" could give him a meaningful chance to break camp with the club this spring.)
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    I think you're reading it wrong. It's about avoid situations where you have to act out of desperation. The Twins didn't do that from 2012-2014 with their rotation, they didn't do it with their 2015 bullpen, and they're not doing it now for 2016. The moves the Twins made in those situations weren't all bad -- I liked the original Hughes deal, and the Jepsen trade -- but when in desperate situations, the solutions you find are often a mixed bag or not enough. A 2/12 type reliever acquisition isn't a desperation move (yet), it's a prudent proactive move to reduce the likelihood of imminent desperate situations. That's the kind of activity I would like to see next from TR.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    I think it's possible the Twins had a payroll cap in mind this winter, and blew it all on Park. I'm not too concerned about payroll, but I am about priorities.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    Although Sale was pretty dominant otherwise, so it wound up being ~4 games over the course of the season, all against a single team. The Twins had his number, and no one else did, so the White Sox weren't able to successfully address the problem. Not sure how easily that theory translates to a reliever like Abad. He got lit up by all 4 of his divisional opponents last year, which suggests familiarity hurt him, but that would have to be a pretty obvious "tell" to be exploited by at least 4 different teams over the course of a full season, and in that case, why wasn't Oakland able to address it?
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Thanks. One thing to note about Samardzija and Abad, they've both had rather inconsistent results over their whole careers.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    So Price and Pettitte had single-game episodes of pitch-tipping. Do you know any examples where it was left unchecked to derail a pitcher's whole season? Obviously a reliever pitches fewer innings to begin with, but it seems like a long time if that was really the primary factor in his 2015 results. Even after the season, Oakland cut Abad over $1.5 mil which would seem unusual if the explanation for fixing him was relatively simple.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    It's about time Mauer got a new walk-up song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0pewqF8POE
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    The Cardinals TV deal was similar in annual rights fees to the Twins current deal, until last summer: "Cardinals Agree To $1 Billion Television Contract" http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2015/07/cardinals-tv-contract-billion.html
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Coming back on topic... The Twins Cities metro area skews on the low side of cable/satellite subscribers, true, but how many households is that? And how many do they gain in rural Minnesota, the Dakotas, etc. where antenna TV is largely dead? Not that we should be able to equal the very top media markets, but there's no reason we probably shouldn't be able to hold our own, or let FSN steamroll us in negotiations. I know we had some TV deal questions submitted for a Dave St. Peter interview this winter -- did I miss it, or has it not happened yet?
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    Which is another data point suggesting the Pohlads have never really had to show special "loyalty" to their baseball ops decision makers. They're perfectly fine working within the parameters set by the Pohlads long ago. What would take special loyalty would be authorizing spending beyond those parameters, or sticking with baseball ops through an aggressive series of moves, etc. Not clear the Pohlads have ever really done that, or even been asked (there is always speculation that Smith asked for more spending shortly before being removed from the GM position, although I doubt it was that simple).
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    I'll dispute that they "stuck by them" in any meaningful way. Why do owners make changes in baseball ops? Because they're losing money or they aggressively want to win. The Pohlads have never experienced either of those conditions, so they never had any reason to meddle in baseball ops. I'm not sure why we should give them extra credit for baseball ops "loyalty" when they have simply retained employees who have 100% satisfied the goals of their employment. Particularly when they've fallen well short of demonstrating "loyalty" in their dealings with local governments, fans, and broadcasters in the stadium/contractions/broadcast arenas.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    But players are employees, who often started their baseball careers making less than the average American. For a lot of players who don't hit the FA jackpot, they return to average American earnings when their playing career is over. Ownership generally comes into the game already millionaires/billionaires, if not corporate conglomerates backed by a group of millionaires/billionaires, and exist in that state in perpetuity. Not really that hard to make a distinction between the two.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    How does that disprove my point? Once they found affordable conservative budget followers to run baseball operations, the Pohlads were hands off in that department. I'm not sure that suggests great loyalty as much as it suggests that conservative budget-following is their top and perhaps only priority in assembling their baseball ops team. I am sure that they have grown fond of Gardy, TR, and others over the years, but it's very hard to separate that friendly familiarity from the core reason they hired those guys in the first place. (Of course, TR, Gardy, Molitor, and others *within* the baseball ops department have demonstrated loyalty to players and other employees time and again, but that's not really coming from the Pohlads, who once the leadership was in place and the budget expectations set, have been hands off.) The Pohlads certainly didn't always display great loyalty in their stadium fight, contraction offer, TV/radio contracts, etc.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    Sounds like the broadcasting version of Don't Beaver, the Marty Cordova cancer kid ad, contraction, etc. Holy cow the Twins were bad at chasing a buck.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Uh, contraction? I don't think there was uncommon loyalty with the Pohlads, but rather as long as a conservative budget was followed, they didn't really care who ran the show.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Agreed here too. I'm all for using internal options, if you're going to actually use them, and aggressively. Preferring mediocre vets, minor league journeymen, and guys you're looking to cut from the 40-man roster anyway has been more the rule around here lately. I wanted them to acquire another good Jepsen-type reliever, to improve the pen but also as proof that the above state of affairs was over.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Agreed. Which makes it extra frustrating that, despite having no apparent interest in participating in the FA RP market, the team still didn't bother investigating some of their top internal options last year (i.e. Rogers). Also, I don't know if simply "more PA vs LH than RH" equals "used pretty well" for a guy like O'Rourke. Everything about his record screams extra strict LOOGY, sort of strange he was the one they promoted if they were looking for a reliever to, say, get some key outs vs RH in a game against the Yankees. (Once they finally get around to putting Rogers in the pen, he might be that guy, but probably never O'Rourke.)
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Also in fairness, they were only 2 years away from opening Target Field at the time. And that Target Field's new revenue streams were guaranteed all the way back in 2005, and the Twins didn't even make a significant commitment to Mauer (aka the most obvious lifetime Twin ever) until almost 5 years later. You might be right on your latter point, although I'd prefer to see some aggressiveness before those guys near FA (i.e. Sano right now). I'm not really all that concerned with their spending levels anymore, more their aggressiveness and choice of targets (for example, it ain't money that's keeping them from signing another relief pitcher).
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Technically, Escobar already had a 2 WAR season last year, so it's not quite that simple to add 4 WAR. According to Fangraphs, our shortstops were a cumulative +2.6 WAR in 2015: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=6&season=2015&month=38&season1=2015&ind=0&team=8&rost=0&age=0 And that was with Escobar and Nunez both producing at a rate of 5-6 WAR per full season. A little regression from both of them probably cancels out Santana's negative value at the position.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    But that same statement is true if the player performs great in the first 1-3 years of the deal -- you'd have to pay a lot more to get them to re-sign for another ~3 years at that point. Greinke is a common example, the Dodgers got a nice deal for his first 3 years but give that performance, they absolutely would have wanted him another 3 years, but that wasn't possible with the opt out. It's probably not worth a ton to the player. A couple estimates for David Price's opt out valued it from $10-13 mil, or 5-6% of his total contract value. I'd think teams like the Red Sox or Dodgers would have no problem paying that premium, so who knows, maybe the players value it a lot higher than that.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    O'Rourke managed a .261 wOBA and 38.8 K% vs LHB in his limited MLB duty last year. I'd say that's delivering some results, although as Nick points out, it's not clear that the Twins are willing to aggressively use a reliever in LOOGY fashion.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    The odds of Williams or Melotakis making the opening roster are about as good as me winning the lottery. Williams threw only 33 innings in 2015, with only 10 career IP above A-ball, and Melotakis threw zero innings last year, with 16 career IP above A-ball. And none of the FA pitchers on this list will sign for more than one year.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Does Abad really look fine on paper? Year - ERA+ - gmLI - wOBA vs LHB 2012 - 80 - 0.69 - .337 2013 - 114 - 0.60 - .346 2014 - 238 - 1.15 - 249 2015 - 97 - 0.72 - .364 For some context, MLB LHP wOBA vs LHB as a whole has been .286-.295 the last 4 years. Duensing for his career has been .273 vs LHB and .353 vs RHB. Even RHP JR Graham managed a .338 vs LHB last year. And Tim Stauffer had a 0.62 gmLI in mop-up work for the Twins last year. Outside of 2014, Abad has been a mop-up man the past 4 years, with results somewhere between awful and mediocre for a left-handed reliever
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    If either Strong or Darnell was still occupying a 40-man spot for "evaluation" purposes at age 28 in 2017, something would have had to go horribly, horribly wrong in regards to our organization's pitchers.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    Lagares is signed long-term, though -- 4 years, $22.5 mil remaining. I am not sure why you would want to risk that much money on a buy low, temporary/insurance CF.
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