Otto von Ballpark

The Dodgers basically got Nolasco for nothing, and made no effort to re-sign him. The next year they picked up Correia for the stretch run too...

It should be noted that McCarthy has somewhat better peripherals, thus a better FIP/xFIP than Santana. Still surprised by McCarthy's deal (MLBTR predicted 3/36).

If Michael was "a util major league at worst", that had already played well (albeit briefly) at AA, he would have almost certainly either been protected from the Rule 5 draft, or selected by someone else in the Rule 5 draft, no?

White Sox sign Melky Cabrera, 3 years, $42 million: http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/12/white-sox-to-sign-melky-cabrera.html SInce they already lost their 2nd round pick for signing David Robertson, they now forfeit their 3rd round draft pick in 2015.

No. See above. Cubs were much more aggressive in quantity, upside, length, timing, and source of signings over the past 3 years. Before Lester, they were still widely believed to have a better immediate and long-term future than the Twins, despite equal or lower financial obligations.

Meyer was actually more seriously injured (and further away) as of last winter. And May was barely on the radar at that point. The aggregate 2014 performances of Hughes and Nolasco were probably close to projections for them. Not an argument against signing Santana now, mind you, just an argument that signing him last winter would have been better.

Cubs payrolls 2012-2014 were 10% higher than the Twins, according to Cot's. And over a third of that difference is due to signing Jackson a year earlier than we signed Nolasco. Accounting for that, it was a difference of $7 mil per year. And B-Ref showed them with notably less future payroll commitments than the Twins, at least before the Lester addition.

Before Lester, the Cubs under Epstein hadn't signed or traded for anyone making significant sums. Jackson got Nolasco money, Soler got 9 years $30 mil -- basically an early arb buyout contract. Everybody else, MLB or international, was getting Nishioka-like commitments or less. Heck, there was lots of speculation that Epstein and the Cubs were being too cheap until the Lester deal (and I guess the Montero trade). Payroll is not a contrasting factor for the Cubs and Twins approaches from November 2011 through November 2014.

Interesting that Mackey and several posters here have taken to criticizing "payroll whiners"... but no posters in this thread have, in fact, whined about payroll. (There appears to be another thread for that. ) The more interesting comment by Mackey, quoted by Seth and debated here, is equating the Twins and Cubs strategies the past 3 years.

Nice article. I don't know if this signing is a statement either, other than "we've really screwed up the starting staff the past few years, huh?" (Actually maybe that was last offseason's statement -- this offseason's might be "we really, REALLY screwed up.")

I agree that Santana is an OK signing, but this suggests TR inexplicably learned this lesson a few years late? Still feels like is a bit of a catch-up signing, especially egregious because our SP shortage has been so acute the last 3 years.

Part of the Twins problem is they haven't been aggressive enough in acquiring guys with the potential to sell high. You can't say "we can't sell high with guys like Willingham, Doumit, Carroll, Correia, Burton, Duensing, Swarzak, etc." without acknowledging that was more or less a known downside when we signed them or invested playing time in them. I doubt anyone has made that latter argument, but this list is instructive because it shows how active the Cubs have been. They've also signed/claimed Hammel, Maholm, Feldman, Wada, Villanueva, DeJesus, Hairston, Navarro, Valbuena, Sweeney, Bonifacio, Soler... and these are just the guys off the top of my head who have provided positive performances and/or trade returns for the Cubs.

Seth, TR has not signed any significant prospects outside the draft or capped international markets in his second term. He also did basically nothing in terms of trades or FA signings his first offseason, other than sign a few older low-interest vets to replace departing low-interest vets. And actually more of the same in his second offseason, outside the Worley trade. It's also been over two years since his last trade bringing in a notable piece, and those were mostly minor leaguers multiple years away outside of damaged goods Worley. I also don't think Cubs have rushed a guy to failure like Hicks (twice!), at least not without an obvious fallback option. Also, I don't think the Cubs have recently cut anyone who immediately succeeded elsewhere like Worley. And also, while TR has started spending significant money the past two winters, the Cubs started that process earlier too. For as big of a failure as he's been, Edwin Jackson soaked up innings in two rebuilding years and is closer to being off the books or trade/release bait than the Twins two biggest FA signings (Jackson is also still younger than them too). The Cubs also have several strong MLB performers signed long-term already. The Cubs certainly have not been perfect, but they have been much more aggressive in procuring outside talent and locking it up than the Twins -- I am surprised this is even a point of contention. It's no surprise that they've also been seeing more incremental improvements over the course of their rebuild so far, not like the Twins starting pitching situation, they are younger, and are expected to return to contention sooner. I will grant that the Twins have had some bad luck, probably more than average, but that's the sort of thing that gets compounded by a slow, passive, reactionary approach. (For more evidence of that approach, see how the Epstein installed a new manager and pitching coach upon taking over, then replaced that manager after just two seasons of progress deemed insufficient.) I am sure you don't prefer elements of this style, but it is very clearly different than the Twins recent approach.

I know they low-balled him last year -- but why? Because we felt the need to guarantee Pelfrey two years earlier in the offseason? Because we felt the need to guarantee Correia two years the previous offseason? (Although we still had a rotation spot up for grabs in both 2013 and 2014 even with those two penciled in.) We may be a year closer to contention this year, but there is no question we could have benefitted from Santana last year (and even more so the year prior). I won't harp on it too much, but I thought it was interesting because Santana is a guy who has basically been on the market three straight offseasons, and the Twins went from little apparent interest to low-ball offer to market rate offer in those three years. Ultimately reactive rather than proactive?

League/park factors and sample size, my friend. Milone has an career ERA- of 103 (100 is average, lower is better). Not bad, but in only 490 IP and trending worse every year of his career (94 - 107 - 112 the past three years). Santana is 101 in almost 4 times the innings. Hughes is 104 with double the innings and trending better. If you want to get into peripherals and FIP-, Milone is easily the worst of the bunch at 108 and has gotten significantly worse in this mark every year (all the way to 126 last year, which would equate to about Kevin Correia's near 5.00 ERA last year). Now, as I've said before, I don't advocate cutting Milone or anything drastic, I am just not going to hold a rotation spot open for him at this point.

Just out of curiosity: Jeff Samardzija's 3 full season averages: 203 IP, 2.2 rWAR, 3.2 fWAR David Robertson's 5 full seasons averages: 64 IP, 2.0 rWAR, 1.6 fWAR Jon Lester season averages: 200 IP, 4.1 rWAR, 4.4 fWAR

And he's not a former Twin, so presumably that minor league deal comes with no guarantees.

To answer my own question, "why didn't we offer this to Santana last winter?" Unfortunately, we were boxed in by fairly inexplicable 2 year deals for Correia and Pelfrey at the time. Thankfully injury has helped us move on from the latter. For that matter, why weren't we in on Santana two years ago, after 2012? We desperately needed starting pitching by that point, and Santana was pretty much being given away by the Angels, yet I don't recall hearing us mentioned in trade rumors at the time. Could have helped a lot the last two years, and also could have gotten this contract started a year earlier too.

I don't know -- when you have that bad of a starting staff for 2-3 years running, that's not good, even if you're rebuilding. TR did virtually nothing to address a very shaky starting staff heading into 2012, then tried to address it as cheaply as he could in 2013, until the situation was so bad that a phenomenal season from Hughes in 2014 wasn't enough to lift us from the bottom. Also, I like that Epstein was proactive from the get-go -- signing Soler from Cuba, trading for MLB ready Rizzo, acquiring multiple new interesting pitchers each year. TR more or less sat back and made his draft picks, and traded for a couple minor league pitchers a few years away (plus damaged goods Worley). And I feel like TR let the Gardy/Andy show stagnate a bit too long -- the Cubs had their own issues with Dale Sveum but moved on from him after just two poor seasons. Not to mention the reliance on player reunion tours. TR is stepping up his game on the spending front the past two winters, for sure. It will be fun to finally judge his free agent acumen.

Brock, in this case, the individual projections were only used to derive a team forecast.

I don't know about that. Nolasco was basically traded for peanuts in 2013, in the midst of the second-best season of his career, with no significant commitment and obviously before his 2014 happened (actually, the Marlins even sent along some of their international bonus pool allotment along with Nolasco in that trade).

In addition to what James said above, with Graham taking the one open spot, the Twins will need to remove someone from the 40-man to add Ervin Santana.

Who did the photoshop on that picture?

Yeah. 55 ERA+. And that didn't even include Pelfrey, who I lumped in with Nolasco to bump his innings up. Heck, you could replace that group with Nolasco's 2014 ERA or Pelfrey's 2013 ERA and cut 30+ earned runs.

To be fair, they already waited a few years. This hopefully signals they aren't waiting much *more* for it to produce.