bird

I'm talking about numbers of players that guys like Sickles view as real prospects, and of course his C grades will bust more often than his B grades, etc. And let's keep in mind that there's a certain arbitrariness in all of it. KC's B grade pitcher, Strahm, is getting eaten alive in MLB. They'd probably love to send him to us if they could choose from our B-/C+ list that includes guys like Mejia, Burdi, Thorpe, Shaggy, Ynoa, Jorge... CWS's B- Adams is toiling in AAA and they would probably trade him for any one of KC's 6 C+ prospects right now. So. that's a long way of saying that once we filter out the really really elite prospects, it's very much to your advantage to have 21 C+ prospects like the Twins have instead of 9 like KC has. And that it's fair to judge a system to a substantial degree on the basis of its higher-quality (C+) depth.

Yes, Dave, they do disagree with you. Even when it comes to SP only. And I'd suspect even with this new information about Berrios no longer in the system, and thank you for that information . Caveat: I don't recall Law or Sickles describing any team as being in the top 5 or bottom 5 in terms of pitching talent. That kind of declaration would probably require more hubris than they'd want their readers to notice. From all that I've read from them and others, they certainly aren't raving about the pitching talent in the system. They're simply acknowledging that, despite the lack of high-profile talent, there is a relatively higher quantity of impressive power arms with a chance to make a difference in the high minors and some talent lower in the system with a chance to emerge.

Yes, I think that's the perception, and it may or may not be an accurate one. That's why I like to look at grades given out in a "vacuum", Sickles-style and try to quantify it a bit. I think that even the better analysts are prone to reputation bias, including Sickles, whereby the more high-profile prospects are often accorded the benefit of the doubt initially and maybe penalized more severely when they suffer injuries or become prospect-fatigued. Like Dylan Bundy for example. And I see real problems with trying to qualify things with the kind of certainty that is often expressed. I take the system rankings with a huge grain of salt. When 65% of your first-half first-rounders either never make a club or never make a difference, and that moves up to 80% for second-half picks, I'm going to be skeptical of opinions espousing a massive talent advantage. Too many of the most prized prospects go the way of Kyle Zimmer, Brady Aiken, Mark Appel, and Tyler Kolek. So yes, give me numbers in addition to a high-profile prospect or three.

So have Law and Sickles. I'm quite fond of their credentials. They disagree with you.

Based on...?

The Cubs have Dylan Cease graded as a B+, and the next pitcher is a B grade. However, they haveone prospect, Eloy Jiminez, a high-profile IFA, graded as an A-. I agree that having one of the dozen or so prospects that Sickles gives a grade of A- or better is a separator both in terms of the rankings and in reality. Sano and Buxton are examples of that. Not picking on you, but my point is that so often the prospect talent gap isn't as wide as people think.

We can set aside talk about all the other reasons we don't have a competitive rotation, since we have almost universal agreement about the failings of trades and FA, and we don't have as huge of a gap in our views about IFA, especially after the pool-busting activity. I'm open to the argument that pitching development is a problem, because the results seem to point to it. I just want more process-specific evidence. But getting back to farm system talent, the two things I push back on are statements that depict the system as worse (often MUCH worse) than it is, and statements about how lousy our scouting people are, often "supported" by some single anecdote. A couple of examples from just the last few postings, both comments from guys whose opinions I very much respect: Brock made the observation that the Twins haven't produced a rotation arm since Berrios, which is obviously a true statement and a huge problem. To his credit, he hasn't slammed the scouting department and is humble enough to question development rather than conclude something about it in absolute terms. Berrios was selected #32 in 2012, the same year Kevin Gausman, Kyle Zimmer, Max Fried, Mark Appel, and Andrew Heaney were selected #'s 4,5,7,8, and 9. We missed on all of them because of that darn Buxton. In 2013, Mark Appel, Jon Gray, Stewart, Trey Ball, and Phil Bickford went #'s 1,3,4,7, and 10. In 2014, we didn't have a shot at Aiken, Kolek, or Rodon and passed on Nola, Freeland, and Hoffman to take Gordon. In 2015, Dillon Tate, Tyler Jay, and Carson Fulmer (not Michael Fulmer!) went #'s 4, 6, and 8. In 2016, the 6 best pitching prospects were off the board when we took Kiriloff at #15, and no team thought a pitcher was a worthy pick for five slots before him. So, I guess I'm still stubbornly holding on to an opinion that the long drought is much more a function of FA, IFA, and trades, maybe development, but I'm not sure. If Ynoa, Thorpe, and Romero come through, maybe IFA isn't the problem either. If Balazovic, Benninghoff, and Brasdural (sic) turn out to be studs...I don't know. I remain unwilling to be overly critical despite the disappointments. Except for of the sell discipline, disastrous trades, and sitting out FA opportunities. Levi made the comment that the Twins have far less prospect capital than the Cubs. Sickles graded 14 Twins prospects as B- or better at the start of the season, and 8 of those are pitchers. He graded 12 Cubs prospects as B- or better, with 6 of those being pitchers. I'm not willing to have my own opinion on the matter, but when I look at those grades, I can't accept the opinion that the Cubs' prospect capital is far greater. BTW, 10 teams had more than 14 prospects that earned a grade of B- or better. The high was 18. And 4 teams had more than 8 pitching prospects graded that highly, the high mark being 11. As an aside, if you really want something to complain about, move to Miami or LA. Each of those teams had a total of two players who warranted even a B- grade from Sickles. Two.

No question about this. To me, it's been a triple-whammy buzzkill: 1. Injuries that leave huge question marks for us regarding Thorpe, Gonsalves, and Jay, among others. 2. Injuries that have caused major delays in the progress of Burdi, Shaggy, and Romero, among others. 3. The performance disappointment of Stewart. I'm not ready to call Jay a mistake pick. Perkins gave us 9 WAR, and therefore exceeded what the average #22 overall pick did for their team. We heard plenty of opinions that Perkins was "only" a reliever and that we should have been able to snap up a solid starter at that slot, again with no mention of the 80% bust rate at that slot. Jay might very well do the same for us. I know people think we should have gotten an ace starter from that slot, but the reality is that the average production from #6 is about 9.5 WAR. I won't listen to an argument that says they should have known enough to pick the prospect selected a slot or two later, Benintendi in this case. 20% of the teams in baseball had a crack at him, so to fault those teams and conclude it's an indication of bad scouting isn't credible. If you want to argue that they should have a strategy to err on the side of a position player when someone with an ace ceiling isn't available, then I'll listen.

SIckles is a guy that I think helps us look at the talent and compare it to the other teams because he puts a letter grade on each team's top prospects. The following will likely change a lot now that we're well underway with the full season leagues, but it still has some value. I looked strictly at the pitching grades for the Twins and the other Central Division teams with the objective of seeing if it gave us any sense about relative quality and quantity/ Again, pitching prospects only: 1) Chicago has a slight quality edge, in that they have two prospects who get the borderline A-/B+ grade. No other team has a pitching prospect that earned higher than a B+ 2) The Twins had two B+ guys, Gonsalves and Romero. That compares to CWS having the two mentioned already and two others as well. CLE had two. KC and DET one each. 3) The Twin's lone B was Jay. CWS had three. CLE had one. KC one, DET none. 4. Mejia, Shaggy, Burdi, Stewart, and Ynoa earned B- grades. CLE had two CWS had one, as did KC, and DET also had four. 5. If we were looking more carefully at depth and wanted to think about the C+ and even C prospects, the Twins and CLE have greater depth. For example, Thorpe, Jorge, Hildenberger, Rosario, and Wells are C+. Melo, Reed, Baxendale, Benninghoff, and many others are C graded. In fact, MIN and CLE have roughly 20 guys graded at least C. This compares to poor KC, which has 9, and CWS with 12, but of high quality for the most part. DET made a concerted effort last year to replenish arms and has about 15 names with C grades or better now. 6. As for quality, meaning B- guys and better, MIN has 8, CWS has 8, CLE has 5, DET 5, and KC 3. Again, these grades are very fluid, and one full minor league season, one off-season, and one draft shakes it all up. But the one conclusion I think I can draw from it is that KC is lagging pretty badly, DET is playing catch-up, and CLE, CWS, and MIN are pretty much either equally fine or equally disastrous, depending upon which team's scouting and development you like to complain about.

1-2; 1-2; 2-3; 2-3; 3-4; 3-4; 4​-5; 4-5; 5-6; 5-6; 6-7; 6-7; This is how I think about pitchers. In my mind, Ervin is a career 2-3 who is having a 1-2 season so far. I'm hoping he finishes by giving us a 1-2 full season. Or that someone takes stupid pills and gives us a 1-2 prospect haul at the deadline. Hughes is a career 3-4 at best, giving us a 4-5 season at best so far.

Going back and looking at a 10-year history from 2001-2010, which lines up with the Fangraphs stuff so we can avoid any nonsense as we look at this stuff: Again, we're keeping in mind that if you picked #1-15 during this ten years, you "busted" 65% of the time, meaning your selection, at the very best, gave you about 1.5 WAR or so. I'll use the average cumulative war associated with the picks in a given slot range for the purposes of making this rather crude comparison. And again,, if you picked in the #16-30 range during any of these 10 years, your odds of a bust jumped to around 80%. Of the 12 selections the Twns had during this span, 2 were first-half selecrtions (Mauer 1.1 and Hicks 1.14) All of the other 10 selections were from the 20th slot or later. A cursory glance shows me that, of the 12 1st round picks in that span of time, 6 have a cumulative WAR that exceeds the average for their slot (Mauer. Span, Plouffe, Perkins, Garza, and Revere), and 6 have a lower average cumulative WAR ( Moses, Parmelee, Waldrop, Hicks, Gibson, and Wimmers). I 'm really not sure what all this tells us, quite frankly. To me, it provides a sense that, while they make their fair share of booboos, they haven't been incompetent. None of this answers the question about whether they get relatively good results from later rounds. That stuff is dicey. I mean, when all 30 teams pass on Danny Valencia 19 times, including the Twins, how do you give them credit for anything other than being lucky? (Valencia has a cumulative 5.6 WAR) Are we supposed to believe they predicted how many times all the other teams would pass on a guy that's given his teams 1.20 production? I dismiss anecdotal talk about later round selections, because no organization passes on a signable guy with no rap sheet who they think is going to give then first-round production.

Fangraphs did a community analysis on June 15, 2016 in which it looked back on the ist round of the draft from 2000-2010. One of the most interesting findings for me was that almost 90% of the selelections either were "superior", defined as averaging >2.5WAR, or they were "busts", defined as <1.5WAR. The other 10% averaged 1.5 WAR or so. I've ofte tried to articulate that there is a huge diiference between drafting in the top ten, and even the top half of the draft, and selecting in Revere, Gibson territory. This study helps to provide some sense about that: Picks #1-5 12.8 cumulative WAR on average Picks #6-10 9.5 WAR Picks #11-15 8.7 WAR and then a dropoff: #16-20 4.9 WAR #21-25 6.5 WAR #26-30 4.5 WAR Now, 48 of the 55 players picked #1-5 between 2000 and 2010 reached the major leagues. I'm guessing most of the seven failed ones were pitchers who didn't recover from injury. This struck me: 16 of the 55 players picked #1-5 became >2.5 WAR 'superior" players. That's 29% That dropped to 20% for #6-10 guys and 18% for #11-15 guys. And then there's a drop-off, to where only about 11% of guys drafted #16-30 became superior players generating >2.5 WAR. So, that's 37 players from the first half of the draft, and 18 players from the second half of the draft. One last thing: The chances of being a bust were about 65% for first half selections and ballooned to about 80% for second half guys. Now, I may be wrong about thinking the Twins have been fairly average when it comes to scouting and drafting. It could be that they're worse than average. And I haven't really bothered to reconcile the above facts to an actual history of the Twin's 1st round choices for the period 2000-2010, in part because of sloth but mostly because there have been enough organizational and financial changes over that time period to render an examination of it a pretty noisy endeavor. However, I'm very confident that depictions like we so often see uttered here about how pathetically incapable our fifty-plus person scouting department is are way off the mark.

It seems to me the problem Dozier was having had mostly to do with plate coverage. That's the talk I remember at least. Holes in his swing were being exploited. Because that's what the competition tries to do. Whereas most hitters solve this problem of avoiding called strikes, by learning to take that outside pitch the other way among other adjustments, Dozier went in a slightly different direction, right? Or am I wrong about this?

Of course not. What was described is the "disaster" that is every organization's scouting staff. It's just crude, anecdotal stuff. A simple look back indeed, but that's all it takes to draw the conclusion that they have bad people populating their sizable scouting department. Context and perspective are irrelevant I guess.

Okay, my dad story. He was a tough old fighter pilot who flew in three conflicts. He loved his scotch, which he bought from the PX in these massive plastic bottles. His four sons would often bring a nice, expensive single malt item over, mainly because we didn't want to drink that rot-gut but we enjoyed a tradition of closing out an evening with him in his study over a scotch. When he died a few years back, we opened an old bomb shelter he'd built and discovered that, when we left the house, he must've immediately taken the expensive stuff down and stored it there and gone back to over-imbibing on his Military Scotch, as we all called it. There were over fifty bottles of good scotch, many unopened. And this is why the farm system is what it is.

Your poor mother.

Yeah, I think the assessment probably is that Vielma is a long shot to even become a MLB utility guy, but they want to give him his best shot, and that involves reps at short. Gordon OTOH is already one of the very best offensive players in the Southern League and will be further fast-tracked to AAA soon enough. Offensively, Vielma might get exposed at the next level.

We could quibble back and forth about what was available for whom, but on the larger point we probably agree. And that is we hope the new guys do a better job of making moves and avoiding situations where assets of any value depart for no return at all. I'm optimistic. And I never want to witness another short era of Matt Capps and Matt Garza debacles.

Yeah, let's pull off another Butera thing, which I think went Sulbaran to Nunez to Adelberto Mejia, correct?

Wilk is fresh. *ducks It's starting to look like we'll have quite a few selling teams at the trade deadline, so perhaps it will be a buyer's market, at least for less elite RP's. But I hope they don't have to go there, because I think they very likely have what they need and are about to start the parade anyway. Shaggy and Burdi for starters. Those two, combined with Kintzler, Rogers, Duff, Press, and Belisle wouldn't be all that tragic. And that still leaves a slew of options for later in the season that may not be terrible: Melo, Bard, Reed, Hildenberger, etc.

No question about that, my friend. I'm hopeful in one sense and somewhat resigned about things from another. The hopeful part of me is related to the assumption that more eyes will be involved, more in-depth research, both qualitative and quantitative, will be applied, and that Falvey will have a discipline and a strategy about both the draft and about IFA. My resignation has to do with how the new agreements have created such a level playing field and how the use of technology (friggin' video of every pitch a 10 grader throws that all 30 teams have archived) that opportunities to create a competitive advantage via the draft have greatly diminished. So much of it is luck now.

There's a difference between a discipline and a plan. Sure, you make exceptions when it makes sense. If we had a surplus in the minors, say at shortstop with Javier, Palacios, Vielma, and Gordon, then trading from that surplus does not deplete you, by all means, look for a way to move that surplus player for a player that fills a need or for higher-ceiling prospects that are further away. That's part of your discipline. And a clubhouse cancer is a liability, not an asset, so you look for a taker. If I'm the GM, I'd even have an articulated set of guidelines for dealing with recalcitrants and what your process is for making qualitative judgments about discounting a player's on-field performance due to harmful off-field or clubhouse behaviors. Ryan, in my opinion, was tactical, not strategic, and valued intuition, which is great, but only if you put some guidelines (discipline) in place to force you to really think things through before making a dynamic move, I really believe that some of the catastrophic trades under Smith were a product of his lack of a trade discipline (and advanced metrics is a part of this) and his lack of intuition.

Yeah, they've missed on a good share of those guys, as all teams do because the odds of ever seeing a MLB paycheck drop off a cliff. Duffey, Burdi, Chargois, Melotakis, Rogers, and maybe a couple others will change the perception that the Twins are particularly weak when it comes to early round successes.

What you're suggesting is understandable. In fact, I'd guess the most common conclusion people reach regarding the cause of the poor record is that it's a product of poor scouting and poor drafting. I reject this argument. I believe the poor record is primarily due to a failure to acquire talent from all of the other available means, the failure to sell high and buy low in general, and because of financial limitations, most of which were self-imposed and many of which no longer are problematic.

First of all, what conclusions are you drawing about 2013, 14, 15, and 16? And why mention five years and then exclude 2012? Let's add some context to things as we talk about the five years you think are so dreadful: 2012: Buxton. What would you have done? Enough said. And he's not the only good scouting decision from 2012. 2013: Mark Appel, Jon Gray, Trey Ball, Phil Bickford, and Kohl Stewart were the pitchers taken among the first 10 picks. The experts said there was a huge drop-off after Appel, Bryant, and Gray. Very few criticized the Stewart selection, but in retrospect, we can see it as a mistake. &%%& happens. 2014: Gordon is looking like a great pick. Again, the top three guys stood out as a step better (Aiken, Kolek, Rodon). Would you trade Gordon for Kolek or Aiken? Pitchers taken after Gordon, Nola, Freeland and Hoffman? I'll keep Gordon, thank you. You can't call this selection "bad scouting". 2015: Jay looks like he might be an unfortunate selection. Dillon Tate went one pick ahead of Jay. I personally think Jay will have a greater impact as a pro than Carson Fulmer, the next pitcher taken. One wonders if the pressure to solve the pitching woes factored into the decision here. 2016: Kiriloff was the 15th pick in the first round. Any attempt to either laud or criticize this pick at this time would be silly. 2017: It appears that three players are being clumped together as separating themselves (Greene, McKay, and Wright) and the Twins are known to have been very actively scouting all three of them, and that includes Falvey himself and other people new to the organization. They have made multiple selections in the last several years that most experts would consider to have been very solid, and that includes picks in subsequent rounds of the draft. Guys like Duffey and Rogers and Chargois and Burdi for example. Our expectations should always be that, like every team, we'll have a first round dud every third year or so, but I would submit to you that your lack of confidence is unwarranted.