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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Not sure if market size will really matter in this context. The Yankees went completely crazy in their international spending last year, and I think still came in under $30 mil after tax. Every team in baseball is capable of doing that.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    I doubt it. The prospect hype was pretty well eroded by the end of 2009. Heck, much of the hype was gone after 2007, but I think the Twins were late to get the memo. Young certainly wasn't fetching a MLB starting shortstop after two bad years with the Twins. Probably wasn't fetching much of anything from any NL team. Lest we forget, Young was traded only 84 games after his career year for a couple marginal minor league relievers. (Hey, it sounds like our second Hardy trade too...)
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Not sure where you get "top 10 starting pitching prospect" for Meyer. At the time of the trade, he was the 27th ranked pitcher on BA's top 100 (#59 overall). MLB.com had him as their #14 pitcher on what appears to be their midseason 2013 list (after Meyer moved up from #40 to #32 overall with a strong AA debut). Meyer was a good prospect, no doubt, but I don't know that he was good enough to be traded straight-up for Span at that point.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    As alluded to above, Berrios doesn't NEED to be added to the 40-man for Rule 5 protection until next year. But, neither did Buxton, and I suspect most top draft prospect MLB promotions don't wait for that deadline either.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    It seems this was a hypothetical example with made-up numbers, but just to clarify: DRS doesn't actually exist for Ozzie Smith or Mark Belanger. TotalZone (TZ) is the pre-2003 data set / metric.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think a simple "chart plays" description is accurate anymore. Zones are smaller, hang time is tracked, everything is confirmed on video, etc. Both UZR and DRS are using data from Baseball Info Solutions. BIS also provides data to 21 of 30 MLB teams: http://www.mcall.com/sports/baseball/mc-mlb-the-big-shift-20150324-story.html I am sure it's not perfect, but given the demands of those customers and that BIS has been in business since 2002, I'd guess their data is pretty reliable.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    The verb the writer uses here -- "looking" -- probably applies to every team and every player in the league. (And of course the Twins have "looked" at these two pitchers in that they have faced both of them recenty )
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    That's the power of the market. Samardzija is a #2 or #3, but he's one of the handful of guys who has been unwilling to sign an extension, and has also been on multiple bad teams (2014 Cubs, 2015 White Sox) and a small market team (2014 A's) looking to maximize their return on him (which includes selling high and trading early, to keep the compensation draft pick in play so far). Actually Price fits into that group a little bit too -- his ERA+ numbers haven't always suggested elite (although he's certainly better than Samardzija, and he's doing great this year), but he was stuck in Tampa who needed to maximize their return on him. True elite aces generally aren't available in trade. So guys like Samardzija and Buchholz become the focal points, especially midseason.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Not all prospects are created equal. Would you have advocated the 2006 Twins to keep Baker in the rotation over Liriano? After all, Baker was a prospect too, whose MLB career was a decent match for Vargas' at that time (roughly 4 months starting, with a decent but likely unsustainable start then struggles). Upside matters, and when the higher upside player is ready for a look, you don't wait until a lower upside player's struggles reach a certain PA threshold. And the Twins have already cast Vargas aside on a few occasions this season -- he's been both benched and demoted already this season, even outside of interleague play. They don't trust Vargas at the moment, and his record suggests they are probably right. If another potentially trustworthy bat is available and ready for a look, they should be willing to try it.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    To be fair, Vargas didn't really struggle straight out of AA last year. With the lack of BBs and abundance of Ks, it didn't look sustainable, but he certainly didn't struggle overall those two months. I'm fine with giving prospects some AAA time too, but as you allude to, the end result might not be any different. The big adjustment needs to be made in MLB.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    May has the worst ERA among the current starters. although the best FIP. (Interestingly, Nolasco beats him on both counts -- an even worse ERA, and an even better FIP.) I wouldn't be surprised if the Twins look at that Milwaukee start and think May is riskier than the other options right now. And even though he was good prior to that in June, he generally wasn't working beyond 6 innings, which is another demerit given our current pen (although ironically, May himself could notably improve the pen). In any case, May should get one more start Wednesday.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    The migratory practices of this particular shark suggest he will swim back here again in 7 years anyway.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Fien does have a career 22.4 K%, and a 22.5 K% since coming off the DL. Way ahead of Boyer, at 15.6 K% career and only 11.6% this season -- second lowest in MLB among qualified relievers. (3rd lowest is Aaron Thompson.) Worst K% is Burke Badenhop, who has bounced around to 5 different teams the past 5 seasons, being available in trade and free agency for relatively little cost despite a shiny 134 ERA+ across 2012-2014 (which suggests an upper limit for Boyer's value).
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    True they have more sophisticated systems, but the end result for a lot of their MLB transactional analysis is going to be a WAR framework. What are our alternatives to player X, what are the components of player Y's contributions, that sort of thing. Obviously scouting, coaching, and development are important too, especially in other contexts. But it seems pretty obvious that teams would use a WAR framework for things, even before they realized it or someone invented WAR as we fans know it.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    One thing that is important to understand about WAR is that it is not really one true number that gets dictated to us, no matter how it is presented in articles or comparisons like this. Both major variants of WAR publish all the separate components of the measure, and for good reason. I think even they understand that the final total WAR is an imperfect measure, and there are many valid cases where the components are more useful individually or weighted/regressed differently. I don't agree with a lot of total WAR-based premises either, but I think the components of WAR are still very useful and possibly the best comprehensive "layman stats" we may ever have in the sport (the next step above "layman's stats" would be numbers derived from PitchFX and Statcast data, based on physics).
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Separate but equal, yeah that always works. Seriously, any separate measure of defense that you devise or endorse is going to get converted to a scale similar to offense, by the teams themselves as well as us fans. Otherwise, how do you know if, say, Aaron Hicks' defense makes up for his lack of offense? Edit to add: that doesn't mean WAR itself is the best or definitive tool for this type of evaluation, but any tool or evaluation one uses will lead to the same comprehensive form as WAR.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Jay would have to be pretty incredible for me to call him up this season. Chris Sale in 2010 had 15 K's in 6.1 IP at AAA and got called up August 6th, I am thinking near that level of incredible, with us still in the race at that point too. If he takes longer to get going or posts good but more sane minor league numbers (like Finnegan last year), or we fade in July, I'm not sure there's enough potential benefit opportunities in a month's relief work to offset losing the 40-man roster spot this winter. Even Finnegan was basically a non-factor for the Royals until an elimination game went extra innings. (Jay could obviously fill a bigger role in our pen, but I'm not going to push him into it -- he's going to have to definitively claim it.)
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Positive surprise, I think it's a group award for the starting staff, with a special emphasis on Pelfrey thanks to his peripherals. Negative surprise is harder, because a few guys were serious regression candidates so they aren't really surprises. That said, Danny Santana was pretty awful with the bat, so he gets my on-field choice, with Ervin Santana's suspension as my off-field choice. Arcia has been disappointing, no doubt, but we knew he'd be bad on defense and he was injured for awhile (same as 2014), and his offense while healthy was pretty much as expected too. It would be nice to have him back and contributing at that level again, but frankly, given what we know about his total contributions, I am not sure it's that big of a deal.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    The sum and interplay of offensive and defensive contributions are pretty darn important in this sport, and you're going to have to do it some way. I welcome quantitative efforts in that direction, as well as keeping qualitative ones.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, there's more discussion now, period (thanks, Twins Daily!). But I don't think it breaks down the way you suggest. Obviously, before the 1970s, there wasn't a whole lot to discuss in transactional terms, thanks to the reserve clause. But by the same token, there was so little detailed data on player performances that I don't think there was really any greater discussion going on about that either -- how much can you really analyze/discuss a basic box score or season/career stat line? First with the advent of Retrosheet, and now with video and PitchF/X, there is more discussion about player splits, swings, pitches, etc. than ever before. (Thanks, Parker!) And I would suspect that managerial decisions and roster management have been at the forefront of baseball discussion since time immemorial.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Really? Take Fielder for example. At B-Ref, he has +19 batting runs above average (Rbat) this year. Add in the +11 runs that average is above replacement level (Rrep), subtract -3 for baserunning (Rbaser and Rdp), and he's basically got a +27 over replacement for raw offense, without consideration for fielding or defensive position. Which dwarfs his fielding runs (Rfield, -4) and/or positional adjustment (Rpos, -6). What kind of ratio would be better, in your opinion? If you skew it any more towards offense, I think you'd be reducing the value of fielding and defensive position too close to zero for my taste. We know those things matter, and they can take some of the bite out of an otherwise good hitter (or boost the value of a lesser hitter), so it's good that they are meaningfully reflected in WAR.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Still leaves Robinson starting in a corner, right? (Or Escobar, Nunez, Santana)
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    The Mariners paid Boone's full salary after his trade to the Twins (well, less the prorated minimum that the Twins had to pay). It was a roster relief move, not salary relief. Remember that infield? Cuddyer, Punto, Rivas, Juan Castro, Luis Rodriguez, Glenn Williams, Brent Abernathy, Terry Tiffee... After 20 days of Bret Boone, we cut him and called up Jason Bartlett to be the primary SS, but 2B/3B continued to be a mess that year.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    By Sickels preseason list, guys in the 15-25 range for the Twins include Turner, Walker, Reed, Hu, Darnell, Goodrum, Rogers, Tonkin, Wheeler, etc. All C or C+ guys at the time (maybe Hu has moved up a notch?). Any two particular names you have in mind? Because in general I doubt that group looks really attractive to Washington or Oakland, especially compared to a #35 overall draft pick in Washington's case.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    And that was one of the most lopsided trades of recent memory.
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