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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Thanks for the clarifications, sorry I misread your post. Still, I don't think $98 million gives us that much room to play with. Enough to make a guarantee to Plouffe, sure, or to sign another Hunter (hopefully not actually Hunter again ), but probably not enough to make a play on an impact player who could really lessen the burden on our prospects.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    That's sort of what I was getting at before. Any one of those deals isn't that big or bad on its own. But the combination of those seven deals isn't a very good base for building a successful team. Three of the biggest contracts you couldn't give away right now (Mauer, Nolasco, Santana), and arguably a fourth (Suzuki). The most valuable of the deals might be a long-term deal for a reliever (Perkins). A lot hinges on Hughes repeating/improving on 2014. And Dozier's deal was already a big guarantee for a few million in potential cost savings for quite possibly a non-elite player. I am not sure I'd be in a rush to add another such guarantee for Plouffe -- there's already almost no margin for error with our upcoming prospects and future FA signings.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Actually Plouffe has been comfortably above replacement the past 3+ seasons. Replacement level is pretty bad, a team full of replacement level performers would by definition win something like 49 wins over a full season. Plouffe is actually solidly average, which is much more valuable. 2014 was his first year solidly above average, so it will be interesting to see if he can keep that up.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    That list is pretty extreme cherry-picking. Bogaerts was a 21 year old rookie, Castellanos 22. Longoria & Wright - 2014 was their worst season in MLB by far. Sandoval & Freese - 2014 was the second worst season in MLB for each. Every one of those four veterans has a higher *career* wOBA than Plouffe's 2014 career high mark. I really am not sure what that list accomplishes, other than to mislead readers. Dozier was pretty good in 2014 too, but it has nothing to do with the fact that his season wOBA was better than Utley and Pedroia. Conor Gillaspie had virtually the same wOBA in 2014 as Plouffe, admittedly worse defense, but is also a year younger with a year less service time. Do you think the White Sox should lock up Gillaspie for the next 4-5 years?
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    If you could sign him at Brandon's target (four years, $28-30 million), that could be pretty good. But that seems on the low side for Plouffe, if he's already got $7 mil in the bank and he's almost a lock for another $7 mil in arbitration next year. Any more than that, and you are looking at paying his arb prices and then guaranteeing close to $12 mil for that FA year. As solid as his 2014 was, I don't think Plouffe has the upside where that kind of cost certainty is worthwhile.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    Parker, is that data available publicly anywhere?
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Your earlier post had them at $98 million for 2016, without adding any free agents at all, and assuming Hicks, Pinto, Tonkin, Meyer, Sano, Buxton, and Rosario are all counted on to make the roster next spring. B-Ref similarly has them estimated at $108 mil for next year: http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2015-payroll-salaries.shtml Their team record opening day payroll according to Cot's is $113 mil, which was cut back after one losing season. I am not seeing a lot of money there with which to play. I don't think money is a big inhibiting factor here, but the fact is we have invested a lot of money in retaining the core of a 90-loss team.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    As jimmer alludes to, UZR/150 is scaling a ton on these early season numbers. You really want to use it to scale down numbers larger than 150, not scaling up from 15. Hunter has 0.8 runs saved by UZR in 12% of a season, a feat probably accomplished by even the league's worst outfielders. (Case in point: Ryan Doumit had 0.6 UZR in a slightly fewer innings in the Braves' outfield last year.) The equivalent would be saying that Eduardo Nunez had a 100 doubles/150 mark right now. (Although I guess that is kinda fun, thus germane to this thread )
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    According to Baseball Prospectus framing numbers, which include adjustments for pitcher/umpire as well as pitch types, Pinto was only 4 runs worse than Suzuki in framing in 2014, prorated to Suzuki's playing time: Stats: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1667331 Explanation: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22934 For reference, Pinto's 2014 somewhat modest offensive performance was 4.2 batting runs better than Suzuki's career numbers to date, prorated to Suzuki's 2014 playing time.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    Looks like you are using StatCorner data. To my knowledge, StatCorner framing data is pretty primitive: http://www.statcorner.com/exp_PreliminaryCatchingFramework.php Given the small sample we have for Pinto, and the fact that Samuel Deduno alone is weighted 4 times as heavily in Pinto's sample as compared to Suzuki's (and April 2014 Bad Pelfrey is weighted 7 times as heavily for Pinto!), I am not sure how meaningful this data is. In the absence of a compelling reason not to, Pinto probably deserves a chance to compile a more meaningful sample.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    The Twins have a very limited history of trusting Latin American catchers. Here is a list of all Latin American catchers in Twins history: Hank Izquierdo - 36 year old Cuban rookie, 16 games in 1967 Orlando Mercado - 27 year old journeyman, 19 games in 1989 Junior Ortiz - 30 year old veteran FA, two seasons as backup (1990-1991) Javier Valentin - traded at age 26 after 1998-1999 as backup and 3 years in AAA, behind Matt LeCroy, Marcus Jensen, Tom Prince, etc. Henry Blanco - 32 year old veteran FA, one season as backup (2004) Wilson Ramos - traded at age 22 after 7 MLB starts at catcher in favor of Butera Jose Morales - traded at age 27 after 24 MLB starts at catcher over 3 seasons in favor of Butera and Steve Holm Rene Rivera - 27 year old journeyman, 45 games in 2011 (Butera desperation year) Josmil Pinto - 43 games caught at age 24-25 (13 of those catching Latin American SPs), now repeating AAA at age 26 Basically, you have to already be a veteran to get much if any respect here if you are a Latin American catcher. And we currently have zero Latin Americans on the pitching staff, and only one on the coaching staff (assistant hitting coach). So I am not especially inclined to give this group much "benefit of the doubt" in their evaluation of Pinto (who admittedly is far from perfect, but has deserved more of an MLB opportunity given our personnel).
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    Any one of those contracts obviously doesn't preclude other signings, but the sum total of market-value (or worse) contracts for average-ish players certainly depletes that resource. The Twins are already at or near their commonly assumed payroll limit for the next 2-3 years. I pretty much guarantee the Twins won't be making any significant FA additions over the next couple offseasons even if they wanted to, thanks to the money already committed to average-ish players.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    There is no ride to enjoy, at least not yet. Through 19 games, Mauer's 2015 results at the plate have been almost identical to his 2014 season. In terms of OPS, the difference has been one single and one BB over those 19 games. The hope is that there will be a ride to enjoy soon, based on (over)analysis of the first pitch / pull data and a lowered K rate.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    I am not sure either. I am getting my data from B-Ref. Parker's source may be proprietary (ESPN/TruMedia?). B-Ref shows a lot hit "up the middle" so if another source is calling a bunch of those pull hits, that could be it. Or if it was eliminating some BIP.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    If you are a big spender, there are $130 (each) tickets in the Champions Club row 3 right behind home plate (section 9) for tonight, $117 if you use the DAILYDOUBLE discount code: http://www.ticketkingonline.com/ResultsTicket.aspx?evtid=2412281 TDers can comment on your choice of clothing while we watch the game.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Yeah, they're tied for the worst run differential in the AL. (Unfortunately, with us.)
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    I am the guilty party who brought up FIP in this thread, but only in response to the poster favorably citing our starter ERA over the last 11 games. It wasn't brought up in the context of defense, sorry if that wasn't clear.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Could be. I think it's still very SSS to tell either way -- the above poster was talking about 11 games. We probably had similar 11 game stretches the past few seasons. (Reminds me when people favorably opined upon Chris Parmelee's last X games, conveniently ignoring all of the previous times when he performed similarly over X games.) It's not tiny in an absolute sense, compared to 162 games, it just contains such a tiny subset of the teams, parks, and players we will encounter this season, it is easy to see how such a small sample can get skewed either way. The range of AL team defensive efficiency ratings (percent of BIP converted into outs) is still over twice as large (.100) as the full season 2014 range (.040). So there will still be some massive swings, hopefully the Twins can stick around the average and not settle at the bottom as they did in both 2013 and 2014.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    A 7-5 record over 12 games is very common in baseball. Every team in MLB does it every season, even the 2003 Tigers. "Mediocre" is often defined as average or undistinguished. Hence, an isolated 7-5 record by itself is quite "mediocre" in differentiating, say, a 72 win team from even a .500 team. (Thirteen consecutive 7-5 streaks, resulting in a 94 win season, would be an achievement well above mediocre.) If they had won 12 in a row, that would certainly be more notable! Like the Mets recent streak. I hope to have that debate about our Twins in the near future.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    If you don't look past ERA and team/pitcher W-L, you are going to make a lot of mistakes. Even the Twins knew that when they signed Phil Hughes, for example. And yes, the Twins starter ERA is outperforming its FIP by the largest amount in baseball over the past two weeks. (I wouldn't call FIP the "truth" but it's going to be better at predicting future run prevention than past ERA, especially over a small sample.)
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Interestingly, he hired the same agency that currently represents Paul Molitor. I don't recall Molitor being offered or considered for many managerial positions... Is there a good managerial comp for Gardenhire landing another job? In the same organization for almost 30 years, took 14 years to land an MLB managerial position, fired after a series of very poor seasons -- it's not a recipe that suggests either the personal ambition or the team interest in landing another big gig.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    I sort of agree with everything you said, but at this point, I think the biggest hurdle to Pinto being accepted as a catcher might not be the few extra innings of AAA practice, but rather actually getting familiar with the MLB pitchers and coaches. They are creatures of habit, and they generally prefer to work with the guy who's caught in MLB before. That's not to say that Pinto is now or ever will be perfect behind the plate, or even the equal of Suzuki. But the trick with Pinto now seems to be getting him some opportunity to catch in MLB. Even if it's just a part-time thing, he's never going to clear that hurdle of acceptance by catching AAA guys (which he has largely done in his time in MLB too -- Deduno, Pedro Hernandez, etc.).
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Looking back, ERA correlates pretty well with wins, of course. Looking forward, K/BB rates are probably more predictive than past ERA, particularly a small sample of past ERA. 11 games of starter ERA is almost meaningless -- the last two weeks, there is an MLB team with a starter ERA below 2 and another above 6. And those two teams are only 3 wins apart during that time (9-4 vs 6-7). (Twins starters have the biggest ERA-FIP discrepancy during that time too.)
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    The Twins similarly "more than held their own" all the way into June 2014. They also started 9-7 in 2013, playing against 3 playoff teams/contenders, and continued around .500 into mid-May. Don't get me wrong, I am glad we don't have the Brewers record right now, but our record at this point doesn't sway preseason projections yet, either way.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    A 46.4% improvement over ~17% of a season is almost certainly not statistically significant. It's ~5 batted balls over 18 games, that apparently have not improved his BABIP or ISO at all (career worst ISO so far, worse than even his dreadful 2014 first half). A 35% line drive rate isn't even sustainable. With Fangraphs batted ball data going back to 2002, the highest full season mark in MLB has been 31% in that time (Freddie Freeman last year, the first player to break 30% since 2003). In 2012 Dexter Fowler led all of MLB with a 27.2% mark (equal to Mauer's 2014 rate). Mauer himself had the 5th highest line drive rate among qualifiers in 2014, and some good that did him! Line drive is one of the more subjective batted ball classifications, and I think one of the least meaningful ones, especially in small samples. B-Ref is already 3 off the Fangraphs line drive count, and was similarly off last year, which is 5-6% of his total BIP in those samples. I like his 2015 K and BB rates so far too, but again he's within 2-4 events each of his 2014 rates. They are all little improvements at this point, not just by sample size, but also by magnitude and significance.
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