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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, Francona finished a clear 6th in this balloting, and his team finished 6th in the AL. Seems appropriate? And Cleveland probably faced greater injury/patchwork challenges than the Twins.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't know if the Twins were really "beset by injuries", at least not relative to other clubs -- and not before many of those 101 wins had already been tallied. And the pitching staff wasn't that patchwork -- after all, we got 146 starts out of our original starting 5 (and most of the remaining 16 starts were again late in the season). By comparison, Cleveland only got 97 starts from their original starting 5 in 2019. He did seem to do well with the pen, which is a big consideration for a modern manager, although some of the pen's "patchwork" nature was by design (i.e. Littell on the Rochester shuttle) and something that most modern managers deal with. But to his credit, he definitely got good, and sometimes unexpected, performance levels out of the group.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    FWIW, I've read reports that the delay in calls was much more like 2 seconds than 4 seconds. Which is much, much better -- although could still stand to be improved before it comes to MLB.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    I was just joking... I hope?
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Not quite yet -- they may just be negotiating a better rate for his services!
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    Suspicious? Like, collusion? I'm not sure if Odorizzi has enough of a track record to be a bellwether for collusion.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Those were arb buyout extensions, so I don't think the "approach" is really similar to what Nick is proposing for FA contracts. (And FWIW, Torii's 5 years in LA were more better by bWAR than his best 5 years in Minnesota.)
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Yes, claims are blind. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise -- I was just pointing out that the Mets may be more likely to waive Gonsalves again (and sneak past 10 teams) in the near future, as compared to an internal waiver candidate (who would have to run the gauntlet of 29 teams). We'll just have to wait and see. But in general, waiver claims don't mean much in terms of estimating trade interest. The Dodgers claimed JT Chargois from us, but it seems doubtful they'd ever have given the Twins value to acquire him. I'd argue it was even more the case for Gonsalves circa July 2019, as he was injured at the time (and perhaps significantly, as he had only thrown 2 innings all season by that point). So no, I don't think he would have brought any meaningful value to a July trade package.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    I am sure there are some situations where teams get a chance to match, but I suspect a lot of these bids are solicited "blind" so to speak -- players don't want teams to simply hold back so they can pay X + 1 to beat another offer (they want even higher offers than that), and teams don't want to be sucked into an ever-escalating bidding war -- especially in a league without a cap on individual player salaries. We see a similar effect in trades negotiations too -- generally teams don't get a chance to match an offer. So the Twins could take some control of the situation with aggressive offers, particularly early ones. But it's still no guarantee, and the premium needed to land, say, Strasburg, might be a worse allocation of funds than waiting to land Wheeler plus Bumgarner plus Odorizzi or whatever. (But missing out, or only getting Odorizzi, might be the worst outcome of all, so they should be prepared to make some premium offers too, for the guys they really want.)
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    I think "interest on a waiver claim" doesn't necessarily imply any meaningful interest in trade. It's still possible the Mets turn around and try to put Gonsalves on waivers themselves this winter -- they already know 19 teams passed on him, so it's just a matter of sneaking him past the remaining 10.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    Presumably Greinke still has the Twins on his no-trade list. Plus. the Astros probably prefer Greinke over Cole for the shorter/cheaper contract too.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    Pretty sure it's in his binders, somewhere...
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, it's all related. Having a shutdown ace means your team might be more tolerant of a bomba outage. For example, the 2004 Twins won a playoff game behind Johan in NY where our bats were pretty quiet. No guarantees, of course.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    I won't wade into the general argument, but I'm not sure about these examples, other than Longoria. Danks was up on opening day 2007, and nothing about Hughes or Zimmermann's timelines stand out.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    By this logic, Keuchel should have done better than Eovaldi last winter too -- but it didn't happen. The market doesn't quite work so predictably. For one thing, Eovaldi didn't have a draft pick attached. You also have to look at supply -- Eovaldi signed the second-biggest pitcher contract last winter, behind Patrick Corbin. Odorizzi may only be ~6th on the SP list this winter. Furthermore, Eovaldi signed pretty quickly last offseason, and the GM that signed him is now unemployed. Add the "World Series hero" factor and I'm not sure it's a good baseline for predicting the market for other pitchers.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    FYI, Raley bats left (throws right, though!).
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    There wouldn't really have been a way to "not protect Wade" in terms or Rule 5, regardless of what happened with Raley. Wade was added to the 40-man last winter, so you'd have to remove him now to give his spot to someone else, and he'd probably just get claimed on waivers.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    I'm not sure Raley was playing *that* well when he got hurt, at least not in terms of forecasting his future. He had a 122 wRC+ at Rochester, basically the same as his AA performance when the Dodgers traded him (123). And this was held up by a .403 BABIP -- 30.4% K rate, only 5.1% walk rate. A .214 ISO, but in a league with a .179 ISO, that's not notable. It was useful for Rochester, but for a 25 year old corner player, it doesn't suggest much of a future in MLB. Is Raley appreciably more valuable than, say, Daniel Palka a few years ago?
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Thanks for the article. Might also be worth noting Nov. 20 -- that's the day reserve lists (for Rule 5 protection) have to be submitted. So all the prospects that Seth profiled need to be added to the 40-man on Nov. 20, or else they will be eligible for the Rule 5 draft on Dec. 12. (And if they're not protected by the Twins on Nov. 20, they might get traded to an organization that will protect them -- Nick Anderson was traded to Miami on Nov. 20th last winter.)
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    It's not necessarily about egos -- the most practical way to get the call is by looking at home plate. Everybody is already looking there for the pitch/swing. And beyond relaying the automated ball/strike call, there are immediate related calls too which may still be the subjective domain of the umpire -- check swing, foul tip, strike 3 in the dirt, etc. You are correct that there will need to be some procedures to deal with system failures/errors. I'm not quite sure what that would look like yet, mainly because I don't know what the failures/errors will look like in the finished system, or how frequently they might occur. But a sensible procedure for dealing with them doesn't necessarily require using the scoreboard as auditor.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    A four-second wait for the call is pretty bad, though. MLB average time for a steal attempt of 2nd base is only 2 seconds. I think this will have to come down to play at the MLB level.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Why bother with all of this just to avoid automated balls and strikes?
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    You can certainly construct a scenario where Cleveland trades Santana (although it's doubtful that he'd return more value to them in trade than he could provide on the field). They just wouldn't trade him to the Twins, even in a 3-team scenario. Cleveland might re-tool this winter, but they're not going to punt on 2020 enough to strengthen their top rival at the same time. Even beyond Lindor, they have good players under contract for 2020 and beyond.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    No way Cleveland would send us Santana as a salary dump. FWIW, I think Cleveland only owes him $14 mil now (some of the original 3/60 contract was a signing bonus, and some was picked up by Seattle). Plenty of teams outside of our division would take that off their hands, if Cleveland really wanted.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    "Never" is a mighty strong word (both you saying lower revenue teams have never agreed, and Chief for saying never resist trading prospects), but the Brewers have made these deals (Sabathia, Greinke, and now Yelich). The Royals obviously had a few famous examples (Shields and Cueto). Discussed recently, and it didn't work out quite the way Oakland hoped at the time, but their Samardzija moves were a net positive. The White Sox side of the Samardzija trade wasn't so good, but they did well with Peavy a few years earlier. Toronto did well in the Donaldson deal, although less good (but far from crippling) in their Price rental. Detroit did very well in the Cabrera trade, plus all right in deals for Sanchez, Price, and even Upton.
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