bird

It's too early to declare that Vargas, Park, or Palka should be part of the team's future, and my guess is that in any event none of the three will ever become exceptional major leaguers. As for Mauer, It appears we're stuck with him at least through next season. After that, I can imagine the FO possibly deciding that cutting him loose and eating the $23M remainder makes sense IF Sano can't cut it at 3B or Vargas emerges as the next Big Papi or something. In other words, he's not going away because he's less productive, and he's obviously still very productive. He's only going to be cut because two or more of the players of the future are demonstrably MORE productive than Mauer. And I don't personally see much evidence right this minute that this is the case. The most predictable scenario is Polanco needing to be in the lineup but only being adequate defensively at 2B or 3B, Dozier being retained, Sano flopping at 3B and therefore needing a home at DH or 1B, and then one of Vargas, Park, or Palka becoming a much more important offensive force than Mauer. And that scenario would probably play out over a period of time, such as the 2017 season. A further decline in production by Mauer would put the nail in the coffin. So, that's a lot of things that might have to come together before the FO would eat $23M and cut bait with Mauer.

Fidel?

Yes, this is the argument that the agreement was signed with a wink, and that the teams knew there would be cheaters, and therefore there is no breach of faith or violation of ethical boundaries. Even though teams knew, as always, that it would be foolish to trust one another, I really doubt anyone expected the kind of cheating blitzkrieg that has taken place. When they signed the CBA, I doubt any team expected they would blow through the stop sign to the tune of $40M, and would have expressed outrage at the time if they had caught wind that a rival planned such a thing. Greed at its finest...

I'll stay away from any discussion of ethical and moral considerations. I have read through the CBA. It's 263 pages long I think. I have tons of experience, over hundreds of years (slight exaggeration here) negotiating and drafting various contractual agreements, but I will say I may be wrong in my interpretation of it. The CBA is a contractual agreement, running AMONG the MLB franchises and BETWEEN the franchises and the players, who have contractually authorized their union to act on their behalf. Abiding by the allotment system is part of this contractual agreement. Every team agreed to abide by the very specific rules established for the system of allotment. They made a promise to the other parties that the other parties had reason to believe would be kept. Therefore, acting in a manner contrary to it constitutes a breach of faith. It does in fact cause harm to other parties to the contract who have opted to abide by its terms. Where the confusion comes in, I believe, is that the punitive costs for violating the agreement are ineffective. This has led to the intent of the agreement being misunderstood, in my opinion. Ethical and moral considerations aside, it is worth it to act in a manner contrary to what you promised to do. The rationalizations I'm hearing about why it doesn't pose a problem run the gamut. The agreement was entered into with a wink. If they really didn't want teams to bust their pool they would have made the punishment a prohibitive one. It's not really a breach of an agreement, just bending the rules. Since you know what the cost is ahead of time and you're willing to pay the piper, you're really not breaking the rules. Since everyone can do it, the only ones getting hurt are the ones not willing to break the rules. You can be pro or con about whether the Twins should violate the CBA agreement. Just like you can favor driving 65 in a 55 zone I suppose, and then we can shift the argument to whether going 90 made more sense because it got you to your job as a Drivers Ed instructor faster. But the fact remains that the speed limit was 55. And the fact remains that busting the pool is against the CBA, at least from how I interpret it. I don't really have a personal stand on the issue of whether you drive 55 or 70, and while I wouldn't do it myself and would view it as unethical, I'd have no issue if the Twins opted to bust the pool. But I do think baseball would be better off if every team abided by the agreement. Like nick said, there's plenty of unethical behavior going on all around us, and I've got my own self to deal with.

Yeah, it's lonely up here on the high road. Shudda stayed off it.

The fallacy I'm talking about is that lots of other teams don't start college pitchers in rookie leagues. Hosken's study focused on an ultimate universe of 11 college pitchers, all relievers. I see that 4 of the 11 started their careers in rookie leagues, including Chargois, the one Twin in the universe. I don't think we can garner much from a study of this group of 11 prospects. It may be that the Twins have somewhat of a bias towards starting some college guys at the rookie level for a period just after they are signed, perhaps to limit their innings after the college season, I don't know. Anecdotally, we can point to a few guys signed this year who started in either the GCL or E-Town prior to advancing. Beardsley is a name I recall, and I seem to remember a guy recently elevated from the GCL right to Cedar Rapids too maybe just a week ago. I guess I remain skeptical that there is some meaningful and deleterious difference between how the Twins handle college pitchers, relievers and otherwise, when it comes to either their original placement or their subsequent advancement. I have yet to see a comparative study that puts any real meat on the bones of a hypothesis about low placement or slow advancement. And my own spot-checking of the bios of opposing starters against our own, at every level, seems to contradict the opinion that we move pitchers slowly. Although maybe if I looked at the saves leaders of various teams, I'd discover some new information.

Actually, wishing they went after a pitcher or outfielder rather than a SS who was bound to be moved and a big lumbering power guy like Diaz is perfectly understandable. That's what I liked about Polanco and Kepler. I'd probably classify that as personal preference on my part, and maybe I'd question their positional priorities and/or strategies. That way, I don't have to put up with the fun of agreeing with them or with the confidence to disagree with them.

We do not know the reason(s) the Pohlads have refused, at least so far, to violate the CBA agreement by spending beyond the agreed-to allotment. If the reason is ethical, then I not only accept that, but I personally and wholeheartedly agree with the decision. Even if I didn't have an ethical concern about cheating and other dishonorable acts, I would accept and respect their decision, similarly to how I accept a driver who holds a belief that speeding violates their personal code of moral behavior.

Sorry, spycake, I was making light of the oft-repeated opinion about Billy Smith's role in signing Sano, Polanco, and Kepler, but didn't intend for it to be at your expense. My bad. I'm not suggesting that's your narrative at all. I didn't begin to suggest that you were thinking Ryan was out there with his binoculars. I was merely pointing out how unlikely it is that all the wheels that have been churning for a year or more leading up to July 2nd would be knocked off the tracks by Ryan's departure. If Ryan sabotaged their efforts, even unintentionally, you can imagine the reaction of a few dozen employees who have worked their butts off, most of whom were hired by Ryan, and these are people who by all accounts share great mutual respect with him. I just can't imagine the whole concerted IFA effort being compromised given all the resources and people involved even more intensely than Terry Ryan in the process.

You can't possibly think they're reading and discussing this stuff and ignoring their scouts, can you? They liked Minier. They liked Diaz. By sheer coincidence, the ninnies at BA must've agreed. I think we can be very confident the Twins do operate at a much higher standard than that, right? Do you think otherwise?

Well, I think you're being rather uncharitable here. I bet close to half the GMs in baseball, if given a chance to swap out their entire farm system and big league roster for the Twins, would do it. Despite the record, we're not the 3rd worst team in MLB, far from it. And if it was solely about player assets under contract at all levels, we might be middle of the road or even better right now in the eyes of the industry. Finally, I think the industry looks at our organizational personnel in a much different and more favorable light than many of us do. Maybe we're in this position today more because of other factors, although certainly not to the exclusion of mistakes and bad luck that put a serious crimp on the talent pipeline. I'd rank poor asset management, particularly with the sell discipline involving selling at peak value every once in a blue moon as the main culprit. Bad trades take second place, and Ryan's irrational fear of risks takes a close third, followed by real and/or imagined financial constraints, and then bad luck, mediocre MLB managing and coaching..... in fact, mistakes with talent evaluation or the development process barely make my top 10 list of reasons we're in this position. And a deficiency in that regard doesn't make the list at all, because I don't believe we have a deficiency. I believe fans of all teams obsess over the mistakes and conclude that their team is run by a bunch of lightweights. And remember, we're talking about unearthing evidence of some consistent level of relative ineptitude at talent evaluation and development. I believe that's what you and others have been suggesting. Pick a minor league club at random. Then let's go peek at the roster. I'll bet we find several prospects that were IFA no-names or Tonkin-round draft choices, age-appropriate for the level, who are looking pretty damn good. And we'll probably find one or more examples of highly regarded prospects performing up to or better than expectations, and more of those by far than the opposite.

Apparently you disagreed with those bozos at BA and some of those other nitwits out there. IIRC, Minier was #7 on their list and #22 on another list, and Diaz was #10 on their list. If BIG signings were equally distributed among all 30 teams, those would qualify, right?

A couple things: 1. Take a look at the progress of what the pros considered to be the top 20 IFA's in 2011. From all appearances when I look at that list, my guess is the fans of about 29 teams are questioning whether their club has any sense of direction or strategy. 2. The international scouting infrastructure has structure to it. Terry Ryan had so little to do with what took place on July 2nd. IIRC, Ryan said he never went out to watch Tyler Jay throw a baseball. If that's the case, I hardly think he sauntered down under to study Lachlan Wells. The guys being signed right now have been on the scouts' radar for a long long time. 3. It seems to me that the only way to pass judgment on the IFA performance in the earlier stages is to carefully examine the pipeline and compare it to the competition. Two things stand out to me. One is that we have a slightly higher proportion of foreign-born prospects in our system than the average organization, so it's not like we're not playing. Second, we have our fair share of successes. Of course, much of this is due to Billy Smith single-handedly scouting, developing relationships, outmaneuvering, and adroitly negotiating, and subsequently developing Sano, Buxton, and Kepler, although he must have turned the development of Buxton over to Ryan a year or so ago and concentrated on Kepler.

Reed had an ERA over 5 most of the year. In AA. Burdi has been injured virtually all year. Still is.

It could. It likely was, prior to 2012, something that led to a mistake or two, Luke Bard perhaps most glaringly. But I would think that if there are lingering weaknesses at either talent evaluation or in development of pitching, we have to literally explain away a few dozen really compelling success stories. We can find multiple successes at all levels within the organization, from Tonkin, to Rogers, to Hildenberger, and on down. There are a ton of later round draft picks delivering impressive results and advancing at a good pace. We can't just consider these to be cases where this is happening despite of poor evaluation and coaching instead of because of good evaluation and coaching. The amazing thing is that a lot of these guys will still stall out or become forgettable major leaguers, but this is the case with every organization of course.

I agree that it's reasonable to question some of the placement right now. I don't completely agree with the generalization about the slow promotion as a part of the development process and there being a lack of trust. There are many times when it's frustrating to see these washed up AAAA guys in AAA. They weren't blocking Burdi, Reed, Melotakis, Jones. Peterson, Hildenberger, or even Chargois to begin the 2016 season. Boshers and Kintzler probably had success with the big club when Reed and Melotakis would have failed them earlier in the season. But now, in August, it's tough to see Ramirez and Burnett in AAA while Hildenberger and Reed are looking very good statistically speaking. And it's hard to see Chargois in AAA when they're parading Boshers and Milone out there.

I think this is to a large extent a fallacy, nick. I've been periodically comparing the bios of the opposing starters versus the Twins in both the Appy and GCL to satisfy my own curiosity, and I'm just not seeing a pattern. However, if in a given year one team has a larger number of DSL graduates to promote and another team loaded up on late round college guys in this year's draft (and this happens), it might be a short-term thing. But I don't believe you're going to discover that some teams are placing college guys in general at a higher level. That said, I suppose there may be a chance that the Twins draft more college guys from obscure programs and fewer from the Vandy's of the world and that this could factor in to placement decisions. But again, I'm just not seeing a difference when I compare our guy to the other guy regarding age, draft order, signing date, and # of IP's.

These are all very legitimate complaints in my view.

First of all, Hosken, I applaud the massive effort you put into this! Thank you! That said, I'm in the camp that sees the "slow promotion" thing as a complexity that makes comparative analysis a nightmare. But moreso, I just don't view it as a critical determinant in the big picture. The goal isn't to move guys quickly, it's to get them ready for success in MLB against very steep odds. The most daunting challenge for these guys is health. Almost 30% of these pitchers suffer injuries that set them back or totally derail them. I may be slightly inaccurate here, but I count 7 relief prospects selected by the Twins between 2011 and 2014. One of them flunked out, Madison Boer. You may recall that he was a bit of a problem child for them, and had trouble staying in shape and dedicating himself to the game. The other 6 have all had significant time away due to injury or illness. Aside from the fact that it's impressive that all 6 are still considered viable prospects, delays due to injury and illness deserve proper acknowledgment, and that's usually ignored to a huge extent when people lambast the Twins because they have nothing to show for all those high draft picks used on relievers. There are a lot of teams that would love to have delayed the advancement and still have the possibilities of Burdi, Chargois, Melotakis, Cedaroth, Corey Williams, and Bard, the other 6 prospects taken by the Twins between 2011 and 2014 in Round 3 or earlier. If one fails to take into consideration this extraordinary rash of serious injuries, one is going to conclude two things: 1. the Twins systemically are slow promoters, and 2. they suck at talent evaluation and/or at developing talent. I personally don't believe this organization is either exceptional at these things or is deficient compared to the competition. And I don't see evidence of a systemically slow promotion process. This research isn't conclusive in my opinion. I think people have a legitimate complaint in some cases. Chargois right now for example. But in general, we have statistics at our disposal and usually nothing else. We don't know if Hildenberger, to throw a name out there, is working with the AA staff on specific things which are driving a decision to keep him in Chattanooga. Maybe the next guy is having a hard time keeping his watch functioning right around curfew, or cries in the clubhouse after he's pulled from a game. There are very likely other important factors at play in these promotion decisions that we just don't know about or maybe don't care to consider if we're in the mood for fault-finding.

All advanced stats people do is count. Sometimes.

Yes, first things first. It would be nice to see signs from Sano, Buxton, Duffey, Santana, and Vargas yet during 2016 that they're getting it and will be consistent contributors, and sure, maybe a couple of them stall out. I think the key to the next wave is the progress of the Outlook rotation, and those guys probably need this year and at least half of next season before we can even think about them as possible MLB contributors. I'm not particularly excited about Wheeler, Slegers, Hurlbut et al. The earliest arrivals of note from the next wave will clearly be relief pitchers. It's a strength for us, not just because we have J.T. Chargois, but because we have an astounding number of prospects with real promise. Jeremy didn't even mention Mason Melotakis, or any of the guys maybe a notch below him, such as Brandon Peterson or Baxendale. I'm excited about the potential of that 2017 bullpen. As much as I'd love to see Rosario as a 4th OF, I don't want it to be at the expense of Palka or Walker. Part of my viewpoint on this has to do with my personal distaste for a lineup crammed with strikeout prone, station-to-station players. I like speed, and defense, and smart base-running, and triples.

Let's not automatically assume the worst at this stage of things, for two very good reasons: 1. They can and will sign additional IFA's during this signing period, just like they have in many previous years. We have no real idea how much of their allotment has been spent so far. 2. They have essentially spent their allotment each year. Anyone claiming otherwise is either erroneous or is disingenuously quibbling about some very small remainder of far less than 5% of the total allotment.

My theory is that opinions skew favorably towards teams with a couple/three high-ceiling, high profile prospects, and that even quality depth is slightly undervalued in these assessments. And that might actually be okay since it's essential to have a couple of future stars in the mix. The Twins benefitted from having Buxton and Sano in the pipeline by perhaps a couple of slots in the rankings, although their depth was (and probably still is) also a strength. The Reds, for example, have a nice little collection of Top 100 guys. I don't follow things closely enough to determine if they have a deep pipeline of guys like Rosario, Vargas, Gonsalves types coming up through the higher levels.

I agree, the Yankees had a brilliant trade deadline. Trouble is, no one was going to give the Twins a prospect even remotely close to that for the likes of Suzuki, Kintzler, or even Santana. The Twins were not in any position to follow the Yankee's lead. They did very well in getting the talent they got, as this Fangraphs report illustrates rather clearly. People were calling for them to simply dump Nolasco for nothing and take anything they could get for Abad, and even Nunez got much more than anyone here was expecting. I'm not sure how one could criticize the Twins for hanging on to those guys for now. It's fairly safe to assume that offers for those three, if any, were underwhelming at best, and we'd hear plenty of complaints if they got a paltry return for them. I trust they're still with the Twins for good reason.

Good game. Luckily, they were able to overcome Mauer.