bird

Wonderful stuff, markos. Thank you!

The level of greed shown by these large professional sports organizations is incredible and sickening. I wish the players who have made it and are making at worst a half mil would care enough about this issue to use their voices, and maybe their union, to improve the situation. But alas, the greed extends well beyond MLB, or NCAA, or NFL, or ESPN, or PBR, or...

I guess that makes sense. So you're fine with Gordon, Berrios, Jay if he pans out, but not so much Kiriloff I imagine.

You guys are geniuses! Half the teams in baseball lacked the scouting projection skill you and stevj apparently possess, because they missed out on Giolito, Seager, and Russell in the top half of that draft. Who should the Twins take this year, you guys?

So who should the Twins have picked in 2007? Why did so many teams fail to find that high upside starter you wanted the Twins to select in 2007? They sure as heck tried. In Revere's draft,, high school pitchers were taken three picks after Revere (Smoker), and again at #42, #44, #47, #53, #58, #60, and #62, if I looked carefully and remembered right. Not a single one of those guys ever pitched an inning of MLB baseball, I'm fairly sure. If the next five teams picked guys that gave them ZERO WAR, and no HS pitcher worked out over the next 30 picks or so, can you label the Revere pick as a bad one? And if so, doesn't this suggest that the Twins are in fact not EXCEPTIONALLY bad at this drafting thing? Would Berrios, Stewart, Gonsalves, Romero, Thorpe, and Jorge qualify as high upside starters? I get the theory and the appeal of a high school pitcher who might eventually take a spot at the front of the rotation over a lower ceiling college guy, and I think the Twins do too, but they're not always available, especially later on in the round.

There go our wild card chances.

I have a nagging suspicion that Buxton's adjustment problem is 75% in his head, and that even his pitch recognition problems and mechanical inconsistencies are greatly exacerbated by what's going on in his head. I can buy the position that he needs to fix this in AAA. If my field people earned my confidence and recommended this, I'd do it. I also have a nagging suspicion that he's closer to getting it than the stats show.

I'm starting by inserting Buxton in CF permanently, sink or swim. He gets the full year and we live with the results. I insert Polanco at SS, again sink or swim for the full year. He doesn't fix SS defense, but he improves it. Then I put my sales hat on and talk to Jimmy Pohlad. I tell him he owes the fans this one. Once I get his approval, I sit down with Wilson Ramos and convince him he needs to come home and that he'll look regal accepting his HOF plaque in a Twins uniform. If he refuses, I say something disparaging about his mom and move on to Wieters, but one thing is certain, and that is I need to go outside the system for a solution at catcher. Suzuki is off the grid for me. Neither Garver or Turner cuts it for me in 2017, and maybe never. Sano gets a shot at 3B for a half season trial. I'm holding the coaches accountable for forcing Sano to show up early and take ground balls. If he fails, I'm not sure what I do, because Plouffe is gone and Escobar and DanSan are utility guys good for a month but not two months. Maybe I get lucky and Niko Goodrum has the light go on. Other than the one-off for a starting catcher, I steer clear of FA transactions except for fringy types I can perhaps eventually flip. As for trades, the other GMs know we have zero untouchables, but, for example, if you want a premium MLB player like Dozier, it will take a SP who projects as a #1-2, meaning a Dylan Bundy type, plus another low-level B+ prospect, meaning your version of Kiriloff, sir. I'm hanging onto Dozier over the winter absent an overpay, and then pitching him again at next year's deadline if circumstances allow for it. Which means we're out of contention, and Vielma and Gordon have sprinted out of the gates. Next, I establish my reputation as an aggressive prospect-for-prospect trader. This is more for long-term results, not so much 2017, but I'm moving surplus at one level for slight upgrades in talent at lower levels. For example, I'm making room at AAA for Gonsalves, Stewart, Jay, Jorge, and Mejia. That means I'm shopping a few C and C- pitchers and looking for someone's C+ prospect one or two levels lower. This surplus includes guys like Hurlbut, Slegers, Wheeler, Eades, etc. In essence, I'm appealing to orgs with thin pipelines willing to pay me to help them add a body or two closer to being of help to them. Hughes makes a quick and full recovery. His problem was a medical one. My rotation is Hughes, Santana, Berrios, May, and Gibson to start. Santiago is gone, and so is Milone. Duffey and Rogers are in the pen with Pressly, Tonkin, Chargois, and hopefully one other emerging prospect (Burdi?) and some other guy. Who am I missing? Doesn't much matter, since I've once again accumulated a bunch of this commodity item. Because I always will emulate the org's dumpster diving for RP's in the off-season, stacking candidates three-deep and then selling surplus at the deadline. I'm not worried about hurting the feelings of Zack Jones and Jakey Reed by leaving them in Chattanooga. If they want out, all they have to do is completely and thoroughly dominate the level for a half-season, and they get a plane ticket right to Minneapolis when I trade a couple guys at the deadline. Okay, the DH/1B/Mauer problem. IF Sano fails at 3B, which I anticipate, then I'm watching the progress of Park and Vargas closely. Neither Palka or Walker will ever play for my club, and are prominent parts of my prospect-for-prospect discussions. I don't particularly like them, nothing personal. I give both Park and Vargas at least 70% odds of failing to emerge as above-average producers. I place the odds at 90% that Sano needs to be relegated to 1B at best. In any event, I'm sitting down with Joey and his mom, and his agent, and asking them to throw a number out there that would convince him to waive the NT clause. I'm already anticipating that mom says no, and I'll tell her that Joey has enough money already, so why don't you convince him to turn his reputation around by announcing he's donating the last $23M, or at least some really healthy portion of his contract to the Twins Community Fund, and that the Pohlads have agreed to match it, after much cajoling and urging by Mauer. I'd then softly whisper to her that, geez, the alternative might be that Joey gets cut rather unceremoniously at some point and mom's granddaughters carry daddy's somewhat sullied reputation with them to pre-school. Bottom line is, I don't have a fix for this logjam unless the players fix it for me via failure (Vargas/Park), success (Sano sticking at 3B), or converting the problem into opportunity (the PR thing). So, the defense up the middle is improved, including on the mound to some extent. Other than maybe moving Grossman if someone like Granite can't be held back, now we wait to see if Jay is ready, if Stewart is what the scouts think he is despite the stats, if Gonsalves is for real, for Romero to explode onto the scene, for Jorge to take the next step, etc. If a couple of these guys come through, I'm dangling SPs at the trade deadline, always on the hunt for prospects in return.

Hey, cut Billy Smith some slack, will ya? After all, he single-handedly discovered, recruited, signed, and developed Kepler, Sano, and Polanco.

Okay, but let's talk comparatively. Let's start back in 2007. Ben Revere's selection was (and still often is) roundly criticized. He was the 28th selection. He was a "reach", and logic tells us that teams selecting directly after the Twins should have been able to take advantage of the fact that the idiots in Minnesota passed up a few stronger prospects. The next 5 prospects taken in 2007 were Wendell Fairley, Andrew Brackman, Josh Smoker, Nick Noonan, and Jon Gilmore. So, not only did the Twins in retrospect appear to have selected wisely, but now let's look at what happened ahead of their opportunity to select a player. What you'll find is that 19 of the 27 players drafted ahead of Revere will end up having worse careers than Revere, or no career at all. In other words, looking at the 33 players selected, only 8 of them will have been better, and none of the eight were available for the Twins to draft. I can expand on this for the next four years. Of the 25 players selected just after the Twin's selection (five each year), only 4 of the 25 project to accumulate more WAR than the player selected that year by the Twins. Those are Randal Grichuk and Michael Trout, both selected by the Angels in the #24 and #25 slots in Gibson's year, Brett Lawrie, selected 2 slots later than Hicks, and Christian Yelich, selected 2 slots after Wimmers. And importantly here, we're talking about the 5 Twins draft selections that people rant about the most among those of the last decade: Revere, Hicks, Gibson, Wimmers, and Michael. And contrary to the general impression and the common narrative, over half of the 110 players drafted ahead of the Twin's selections in this time period will likely have no better careers or will have worse careers than the Twin's selections. And again, we're dealing with two of the five probably having no career to speak of with Michael and Wimmers, and two others being rightfully viewed as having less than stellar careers in Revere and Hicks. Only a half-dozen teams were NOT guilty of passing on Trout. So two dozen teams are complete idiots. When people say the Twins are crappy at drafting, I agree with them. When people say the Twis are EXCEPTIONALLY bad at it, I say prove it, apples to apples.

We see this statement around here all the time. Frankly, I think it shows a level of myopia, and here's why: For starters, terrible compared to whom? Kiriloff Jay Gordon Stewart Berrios Buxton Michael Wimmers Gibson Hicks Ten year's worth of picks. Surely, there's lots to quibble about, for example Fulmer instead of Jay. But to say that they've made terrible decisions? At the time of almost all of these picks, I believe you would find more commentary from the draft experts applauding the decision than you'd find criticizing the choice. The last four, Michael, Wimmers, Gibson, and Hicks, have been constantly touted around here for years as the poster children for how crappy our GM is (because he obviously single-handedly selects these guys, we all know that). No consideration seems to EVER be even begrudgingly offered by critics for EITHER the draft order OR the quality of the draft that year. And it's almost ALWAYS a criticism that doesn't allow for comparison. But that doesn't stop many critics from continuing with the narrative that the Twins are exceptionally bad at it, and the main retort to my pushback is the current record, as if no other factors could even possibly be the main source of the problem. No, bad draft decisions simply HAVE to be a big contributing factor to the teams struggles, they say. And so, I keep asking people to go back and review those four drafts, 07'-'10, and make a list of the 5 players taken after Michael, Wimmers, Gibson, and Hicks. Now, if the Twins were all that bad, wouldn't you think that a majority of those 20 selections would be productive players? Certainly, half of them at least? I have yet to get a response. Not once. My theory is that, by Taildragger's definition, almost ALL teams are terrible drafters over this ten-year period of time. Because, maybe their Gibson and their Hicks were not all that impressive and it goes unnoticed that, if looked at fairly, that was pretty much the best they could do in that particular draft given their particular order in that particular draft. So, c'mon guys, go ahead. Go out to the '08 draft and tell us who which two prospects they should have considered within a few slots after Gibson if they had any brains in their heads. And if you mention some Cy Young winner selected in the 37th round, you deserve to be banished for life.

Antony said it during his recent interview with Doogie.

Yes, I'd agree with that take. Without an ounce of knowledge and armed with a few paragraphs of information, I had an uneasiness about Jay that I don't think I would have had with Fulmer or Benintendi as the pick. It'll be interesting to see if we get some hints about what the new guy thinks of Deron Johnson and his top scouts, and whatever we learn about changes they make in the process are going to be fun to discuss.

Historically, three of your top ten picks never see a day in the majors, and couple of the top ten pitchers always end up as relievers, so while it would be a disappointment to end up with Jay being more Perkins-like, that's just part of the whole shootin' match. Caveat: anecdotally, it seems like the predictability of these top picks is improving recently, at least when it comes to the college guys from elite programs.

Every team that drafts the #6 prospect each year has fans that complain about the couple of guys drafted a few picks later that have better careers than their guy. It may be that Benintendi has the best career of any player in that draft. So fans will call for the heads of GM's across the continent I guess. And it's not a race about who gets here first. Jay is progressing at a normal clip. Berrios and Buxton are terrific picks, looking retrospectively or otherwise. The Twins have not had an awful draft now for a decade now. Well, maybe one. Practically every team in baseball had an awful draft the year Levi Michael was drafted. The Rangers, Mets, and ohers have also had an awful draft during this period. It happens.

If someone offered me a bet that Tyler Jay would have a better MLB career than Carson Fulmer and that Nick Burdi would end up as a better reliever than Zach, I'd take it. This would be based on absolutely knowledge-free fandom.

Um, yes?

By getting to AAA, Dean probably achieved beyond his physical talent on brains and guile. He's immensely popular with his teammates and with the Rochester fans, and just seems like a guy you want to root for to me. But, yeah, I think we want pitchers with more raw talent holding down the last spot in the rotation or occupying a bullpen spot.

Yuck. Jose Canseco? Well, that's an entirely different matter.

Good catch on Santiago. If anything, the fact that he wasn't top of mind hints at an awareness that Santiage is at best a #5 starter on any team even sniffing at a wild card spot.

Jack Goins spent a ton of time and energy with us on another thread, and that really goes a long way.

You just made my point. Because the next guy's response is: Well, I don't think Alex Meyer is a failure yet, either. He's been injured... And Rosario may turn into a flash in the pan, but it's too early to stick a fork in him. There are some back and forth adjustments with pitchers yet to come. And yes, let's reserve judgment on relievers then. Let's retract the earlier declaration of failure for now, and ignore Duffey's MLB career for the moment. Regardless of what we agree or disagree on with a list of names, we're not "proving" anything. If someone wants to convince me that the Twins, for example, are one of the best talent evaluators and talent developers, I want to see a reduced-noise comparison to the other teams, not some list of failures removed from any semblance of context. No more "gee, the Tigers have Verlander, and we have Gibson stuff, so we suck at drafting players." I'm glad those types of posts are increasingly rare on TD.

You may have missed my point. I wasn't attempting to throw a list of names out to "prove" anything. I was instead trying to point out how bantering about a few names on someone's proof list proves absolutely nothing. And your response is clearly proof of that.

The drafts for several years in a row, by the estimations of a lot of experts, have been good, right? Perceptions will be clouded if people focus on the misses, ignore the hits, and prematurely judge things. An earlier comment in the thread from Taildragger talked about the "disconnect" between minor league success and major league results, and that's an understandable phenomenon. My opinion is that the primary disconnect between those two things is the patience of the observer. If we did a review of the comments from 3 years ago, we'd find comments about several of the players who are now clearly a promising part of the future like the one you accurately make to describe how Buxton looks right this minute (hopeless).

Throwing out a list of names is always the easiest way to "prove" a point. Of course there will be failures. What does that prove? Show me data that proves that other teams have fewer failures. And if someone wanted to "prove" the opposite point, his/her post would read like this: Trevor May? Max Kepler? (debatable, I know) Can't it be considered a success that so many of the relief pitchers drafted have either already had ML success (Duffey) or, despite almost each and every one of these guys being out for a season, or more, that they are still considered to be exceptional relief pitching prospects by the experts? I'm talking about Chargois, Burdi, Reed, Jones, Hildenberger, Melotakis, Peterson, Jay, Cedaroth, Bard.....the list goes on....and MOST, not some, of these guys have been delayed only because of injury. Aaron Hicks? Okay, tell me how well the five guys drafted BEFORE Hicks and AFTER Hicks are doing? That way, we can tell a little something about the available talent that year. Who knows, maybe some would form an opinion that, given the situation, Hicks wasn't that bad of a call.