bird

I know I do...

Yeah, I think the prime opportunity for a return for Hughes, Santana, Odorizzi types is when a contender is assessing which starter delivers the most second half wins for them when they deadline shop. Back to Vargas. If they shop him, give me a prospect comp in out system. Benninghoff?

Well, these comments make it pretty clear that, like with Cuddyer, you in fact DO have an issue with Dozier's "leadership". For a guy who would castigate anyone who even mentioned a pitchers W-L record, it's amusing that you are informing us that Dozier must not be much of a leader, you know, because 103 losses. Dozier's value will likely be higher than it might otherwise be because of his almost unimpeachable character. I'm liking that Falvey isn't clamoring to hand out a huge contract to him on one hand, because, I certainly don't think he's irreplaceable. In fact, he may be adequately replaced by Nick Gordon, the guy you think has a ceiling in line with Ahire Adrianza but with worse defensive chops. If he has a good start, he could fetch value from a team looking for a rental. If not, getting a 2nd round draft pick would be disappointing but not disastrous I guess. Like the rest of us, you don't know what his trade value was in the past, is now and will be in the future. Let's stop acting like last year's Dodgers talks, about which you have no proprietary information, did anything to set the market for him. His value won't be low for the reasons you've suggested, but rather, because his contract status eliminates any seller's leverage.

Are you perhaps under-rating him? I recall you doing that with another highly visible and outspoken team leader in the past, Michael Cuddyer, and can't help but draw a comparison. Makes me wonder if his extraverted nature impacts your assessment of his baseball talent, skills, and value. Remember how dead wrong you were about Cuddyer when you suggested he was so bad they should just DFA him?

Those are good points, although it seems we already have quite the shuttle system going on. When I execute my bloodless coup and take over, I'm going to buy and furnish a couple of condos on the riverfront near Target Field for these shuttled players to use. Getting a major league paycheck while they're up should take care of any further inconvenience, and if they want more rewards, there's always stickers.

Wouldn't it be fun to have this conversation with Falvey, Stiel, or someone else from the development staff? Maybe it's just because I know so little, but to me, this idea makes sense. Personally, I think you're a genius.

If Gibson, Mejia, and Hughes are all performing like #3's, Berrios and Santana are giving you front line performance, and May looks sharp in rehab? I'm looking to see if anyone wants to overpay for either Hughes, Santana, or Gibson at the deadline. Especially if Gonsalves, Sleger, or anyone else at AAA is lights out. This ain't happening.

I'd make a clearer distinction between a new guy who's inconsistent but showing glimpses of the future and a guy who just flounders. Mejia versus Cole DeVries. If I'm a GM trying to create my ideal formula, I will always, and I mean always, have a rookie 5th starter. Ideally, he is brought up as an injury replacement. I expect this rookie will be a mid or front end starter by the following season and who I think will take his lumps but get better as the season progresses. I want to have at least two more just as ready in AAA, again guys who I expect will eventually become at least mid rotation stalwarts. To make this work, my first two starters have to be giving me #1-2 performance and my next two guys must be legit #3's. Then, I'm always looking for a trade, at the deadline or off season, from surplus starters. It's the most sought-after asset in the game and probably the best way to extract an overpay in a trade. Not that the example is immediately comparable, but it makes the point about building assets as the recipe for competitive success: CWS trades Sales, after enjoying much of his prime at a very reasonable cost, for the very best prospect in baseball, Moncada, a future #1-2 in Kopech, a guy who might be THEIR version of the rookie #5 taking his lumps in 2018, and Basabe, who will have a good career most likely. The Twins would foil my designs today. They don't have two front end starters, and maybe not even one, we don't know yet. Everyone vying to be a #3 might end up being a #4 or worse. And their rookie candidates, Sleger and Gonsalves, lack front end ceilings, and maybe even lack #3 ceilings. Romero is another year away, and we'll have to wait and see who emerges as as a potential mid or front line prospect besides Romero, who, like every pitching prospect, remains a question mark in his own right. I'm convinced that the most critical component of sustained success is to build a pitching pipeline through the draft, IFA, and trades, and to systematically and consistently introduce young talent into the rotation.

JT Sayonara

Pushes Gordon back again to our 4th best SS prospect.

That was a nice way of saying "will you shut up already about Sickles?". Here's a hug, bro. Teams like the Twins who have a shortage of truly elite prospects, and we do, are going to be be judged accordingly. Personally, I think that's appropriate. Even though the White Sox have half as many B- prospects, I'd trade systems tomorrow. But the other side of this is what you're saying. Having a ton of extra darts is under-appreciated. We should all be in therapy for PTSD given all the blowups like Burdi. But we've salvaged at least some respectability because of home-grown talent, even if it's guys occupying spots at the fringes. Hildenberger, Rogers, Curtiss, Granite, Chargois, Reed, Enns, Jorge, and Slegers all have something in common: none of them have earned a B- grade from Sickles.

It's prudent to avoid Pollyanna-ish opinions and sentiments about these lists, because casualties are inevitable and we're going to be wrong a lot. Before last season started, there was a smattering of talk about how we were making room in the rotation in 2017 for Berrios, Mejia, and May to slot in with Santana, Hughes and Gibson, which gave us the "good problem to have" for 2018 of figuring out how to make room for Gonsalves, Romero, Jorge, Jay, and Stewart. Boy, were were loaded! We were pretty high on Palka and Vielma, and a few of us even liked Haley. We were looking forward to recovery years from Burdi and Chargois (Bard and Reed had fallen off the radar). Of course, we weren't thinking too much about the emergence of Hildenberger, Slegers, Curtiss, and Granite as important assets and even roster inhabitants. To me it's interesting, both the successes and the disappointments, although I feel badly for the prospects who fail, like Harrison. We're always saying our goodbyes to prospects we liked to follow, often due to failure, but sometimes because they were converted into a new asset, so thank you to the Ynoa and Palacios types. And for every prospect whose bloom is perhaps fading (Melotakis, Cabbage, Jaylan Davis, English, Balozovic, anyone?), we have prospects suddenly stirring our imaginations. Last year we had fun discovering Baddoo, Graterol, Miranda, Wade, and rediscovering Thorpe, in addition to the new guys like Lewis and Enlow. Anyway, Nick, thank you for a nice, fairly balanced recap. I'm very much looking forward to not only following this group, but seeing who emerges from the shadows (my knowledge-free picks are Arias, Benninghoff, Barnes, and Moran). The successes and new discoveries ease the pain of having to deal with the failures. ( My knowledge-free picks are Jorge becoming a 4A guy and the white flag being raised on Stewart. Would love to be wrong of course.)

If my son was a college baseball player, I'd very much encourage him to play in Cape Cod over Northwoods. If my daughter was a college coed, I'd keep her at home.

You're attempting to pin a simple faulty conclusion on us here, and I'm urging you to avoid this rhetorical technique when you have so much to offer without it, my friend. That's a simplistic statement we don't hear on these threads. Lewis gets ranked by BA just a few slots ahead of the other four, the pitchers. Greene is still viewed as having ace upside, but the consensus is that there is a boatload of refinement work on his horizon, and therefore no massive amount of confidence about him from most evaluators. Of the other three, Gore ekes out a tiny edge in terms of optimism for future acehood. The other two, Wright and McKay, are getting more #2 than #1 hype these days. All this just reinforces a view that, if you think Lewis is their "equal", and perhaps gets an edge because of his inherent risk advantage over pitchers and his makeup, you take him. Lewis over Greene and Buxton over Gausman, I say. Your statement above, using the words "good players" doesn't help us sort through much of anything. But let's think about the difference between an "ace" and a front-of-the-rotation starter. The second guy is part of a very large spectrum. The ace very much less so, agreed? And so dang rare!!! So how do teams get "good players" who are pitchers who are aces? Mike, they hardly EVER do. Even when they do, it's more often Verlander, who is no longer giving you #1 performance, or it's Sale, who required a future ace, Kopech, as part of the return along with the best prospect in all of baseball and two other good prospects. I say, forget worrying about aces and concentrate on finding front-line talent. The Twins only have three such prospects that we know of in the pipeline (Romero, Enslow, and Graterol), and that's not enough. But please, Mike, let's stop repeatedly citing Ryan's irrelevant history of failure on this. Find me indicators that Falvey is going to fail if you want to bolster your case for pessimism. He failed to land Ohtani and had to settle for a couple of decent prospects in exchange for IFA pool dough in that long shot effort. He missed on Darvish. He passed on some talent to take Lewis instead, and then he hit on Enslow. Looking at BA's Top 100, there are almost NO pitching prospects outside of Ohtani that would garner a consensus view that they're destined to be aces, and that includes the couple dozen 1st-round picks. Take CWS, for example. They have 5 pitchers on it who were 1st round selections. Cease came to them with Eloy Jiminez in exchange for Quintana. He has #2 ceiling at best. Fullmer is destined for the bullpen. Zacch Burdi too, IF he recovers from injury. Dunning is at best a #3, like our Gonsalves. Hansen, an early2nd rounder, is a #3. So Kopech is the one guy who gets a #1-2 label out of 5 1st round selections. Clevland's 1st rounder, McKenzie, is a #2. Detroit's Faedo and Manning, probably the same thing, maybe less. All of this is just to say, yes, finding front line guys is really hard. For everyone. You can draft them (Berrios), you can find them occasionally via the IFA (Romero, Graterol), and you can trade for them once in awhile but you need assets to trade. Dozier should net a front line starter, and I for one am glad they didn't settle for DeLeon. Or, you can sign one as a FA. They missed on the only one out there this time. Personally, I like Falvey's chances of building a decent rotation. Just not in time for the 2018 season.. So Mr. Falvey, thank you for letting your scouts do their work and point you in the direction of the BPA in Royce Lewis.

It would be nice to put the social media controversy here into proper perspective and then to put it to bed. It's not about the use of social media per se. The source cited by Parker, I'm positive, was simply pointing out that Lewis isn't a self-absorbed, attention-hungry narcissist but instead is a humble, team-oriented, mature, gracious young man. No one's saying the opposite is true about every active user. Are they?

I get that, Mike. My guess is that, they liked all of these prospects, but maybe just not enough to think any of them were odds-on favorites to be Strasburg-like sure-fire aces, and secondarily, viewed Lewis as at least their equal ceiling-wise. So, yes, I agree, and I think they do too, that you don't pass up an ace in the draft. And even then, gird yourself. DId you get Verlander, or did you get Appel or Prior? The FO wasn't quoted as saying they 'don't like" to trade prospects. They said they didn't like this year's market, that prospect prices were out of line. Their opinion of course. Two more important points of view that have been historically expressed are that draft order is a huge factor in adding talent, and that its especially hard to add good players later if you don't have surplus talent to trade. Case in point, the Dozier situation. Odds are good that one of those four might end up having the "best" career, but on the surface, Lewis looks like a high-quality decision to me. I'd also point out that some people wanted Gausman instead of Buxton based on your argument, even though Gausman projected as more of a #2 than a sure-fire ace, same as these four.

I think part of the question mark relates to the fact that he played SS for the first time as a HS senior as mentioned, so prospect gurus had limited information and his defensive skills were in catch-up mode. I vaguely recall one report saying his improvement in the field was impressive in and of itself during the course of the season. Actually, I'm kind of excited by the idea of an outfield of Lewis, Buxton, and Badoo. Wander Javier at SS. All future HoF's of course, no doubts about that.

McKenzie Gore, Hunter Greene, Brendan McKay, and Kyle Wright aren't going to help any team in 2018. I'm not sure that your point here has any real relevance. It was either a high-quality decision or it was not, and the early indicators are fabulous.

They screwed up.

Hey. That's Falvey's line.

Yes, when reading the write-ups, most pros articulate the red flag related to his physical state, and yes, pretty much all of them assume he gets his man muscles as he matures. I have yet to see a minority viewpoint, meaning a viewpoint that predicts a utility man outcome, where they cite this as the factor. They cite all of the other red flags that the pros also cite, and it's fine that they come to their own conclusions about Gordon. The pros express doubts and cite risks. I certainly don't see lots of conclusions that Gordon is on a certain path to be a utility guy, or that his comp id Pero Florimon and Lombo, do you? Again, what I was trying to get to was expressing disdain for the opinions of the pros because they aren't data-driven or baseball-based, whatever that means, as if one's own lofty opinion is somehow more factual or something, especially when the opinion has been accompanied by more nebulous negatives. Gordon has a good chance of failure, and I think the pro evaluators rank him highly because they think he has a chance to overcome his current deficiencies and not because of other things, klike draft position and pedigree.

Curiously, I think I've read scouting reports or have seen comments about all four of these guys saying they have a chance to stick at SS. The only one of the four that I cannot recall someone suggesting they may need to switch positions is Palacios. But I don't catch everything and would guess someone somewhere has said Palacios may not stick. It feels like a standard caveat these days.

Thank you for your two posts. Insightful stuff. If snowfall is what it takes to get you to post, let it snow.

Exactly what red flags have the pros missed? You, like thrylos, are entitled to your own opinions of course, and as always, they're welcome here. I will say that I completely disagree with your statement that "nothing in Gordon's past performance indicates he will be anything but a spot starter with no pop." A ton of evaluators are examining Gordon's past performance and concluding something different than this. You did a good job in your comment of reciting all the areas of concern that have been commonly expressed. There's nothing new in either yours or thrylos's assessments in this regard. There's nothing at all wrong with holding a minority opinion, but my post had mostly to do with this odd notion that what the pros are saying isn't based on data and baseball-based, thereby calling what they say into question.

Don't despair, his rate of decline will level off over the last four years.