The Wise One

Grossman has been getting AB as DH lately. Do you suppose someone could be interested? Getting at bats while limiting his time in the field does seem like a good idea

I would think over time Sano's eye will improve as he learns what pitchers throw. Might not, but it seams reasonable.

The chart shoes the value of getting the one player of the draft 08.09.10. and 11 are the valid comparison years as you really should have the players at least either mature, or have a few seasons to judge by. That is sort of the problem with trying to assess drafting, it takes a quite a few years. 2011 draft, number of high school players having played a full season not drafted in the top 10? Does that mean the scouting director did poorly? You do not have the data to know if solid players were picked. It seems like more and more players are not hitting their stride until 25 except for the exceptional player. The 2009 high school draftees would be in that group, 2011 college players. What is presented is showing that it pays to be lucky to draft the exception player near the top of the draft. Any team with a big number more often than not had an early draft pick. Valid research, once again a wrong conclusion from the author

Dave, Duffrey's season says hello.

Antony was the assistant to Ryan. He is not a clone of Ryan. If he had aspirations for a GM job and has a reasonable amount of intelligence, I would think he would have looked at what others do. I wouldn't begin to know how he views talent evaluation. We will find out. The search firm lined up an experienced person for Toronto who brought his people with him. I guess country clubs can move. I looked on the Brewer front office page. The reassigned regime of Melvin and Ash still have prominent roles. I really would not bet on wholesale changes to the front office.

Cashner had a couple good seasons a couple of years ago, why would you want another pitcher declining and breaking. Gio is over 30 and not having a good year. Glory days have passed him by. Middle of the road players are not going to get you top prospects anymore. If you can find the undervalued player in someone else's system that is high risk but high reward and it works, great. When it doesn't you get the teeth gnashing that get prevalent on fan sites who seem to expect perfection.

WAR does not measure everything a player does. What part about listing all the mistake pitchers Ryan tried to make major league pitchers did you miss? There was a whole list of them that you somehow missed. They were all in the post if you go back and read it. Albatros? Did you even understand the content? Why are the Twins signing some of the pitchers they have? PTSDPavano's injury and implosion, inheriting Blackburn's contract, Cole DeVries, Sam Deduno,PJ Walters, Esmerling Vasquez, Liriano imploding,Scot Diamond, Pedro Hernandez,Vance,Alber's mirage of pitching 2 great games,Johan Pino,Nolasco, and Hughes had to seem and upgrade. Nolasco's injury and or implosionscould make it seem more imperative after that. Last year Nolaso's injury and Santana's suspension should have had Ryan on the suicide watch. Where out of any of that says Ryan did a great job with pitching? 8 AAA pitchers, and not even mention Marquis, Duensing, Swarzak , Correia and Pelfrey does not constitute saying that he did a good job with pitching. Pitching has been a mess. All Nolasco had to do was come in and pitch like he had and he would have looked great. Instead one could wonder if DeVries as been pitching in a beer league and available.

You are aware that Verlander's season prior to his ROY season was 2 games in July and was sent back down? So the consternation about not calling up Berrios and using Verlander as an example of someone who worked through the rough spots at the major league level is odd at best.

Interesting Norlander talking about analytics. Of course they probably were not real analytics to the SABR crowd here that complain about the Twin's analytics.

Signing Hunter seemed to work last year. His departure is about the biggest change from last year. Why are the Twins signing some of the pitchers they have? PTSD Pavano's injury and implosion, inheriting Blackburn's contract, Cole DeVries, Sam Deduno, PJ Walters, Esmerling Vasquez, Liriano imploding, Scot Diamond, Pedro Hernandez, Vance, Alber's mirage of pitching 2 great games, Johan Pino, Nolasco, and Hughes had to seem and upgrade. Nolasco's injury and or implosions could make it seem more imperative after that. Last year Nolaso's injury and Santana's suspension should have had Ryan on the suicide watch. After this year's round of injuries and regression no wonder Ryan said now rather than later. FWIW The stats guys at ESPN had Nolasco as the third best starting pitcher available when the Twins signed him, Passan had him 6th best starter so others thought he was as better than most. The find a better pitcher mantra is cheap and lazy. Every team has bad guess on players, Ubaldo Jimmenez comes to mid as well as a few Uptons without the first name of Kate.

Most organizations keep quiet about the specifics of their decision making process. What evidence do you have that they don't use metrics in their analysis? That they don't talk about? That they don't list every staff person on the mlb.com website? You threw mud.

Verlander had an ERA+ of 125 in his first two full seasons. He was ROY. What the heck does Verlander have to do with Berrios being inconsistent?

Missed the point completely, as badly as a Drew Butera swing.

Pohlad wasn't going to relieve Ryan of his duties until the end of the season, Ryan chose now. Big difference in accuracy of reporting Ruesse knows baseball. He isn't around the Twins enough to know what Pohlad thinks.

I could have said a simplistic vision is win it all. When you start with a roster that needs personal improvement or outright different player as improvement at about 13 14 different spots, the statement to win it all seemed somewhere between ludicrous and as unrealistic as in thinking the 2016 Twins could contend

When you trade anyone there is no point in making the trade if you do not get anything of value back. Even the "negative" value of Drew Butera brought back a prospect that brought back an All Star

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHfB63ln1Ig[/media]

What sort of vision did you expect? Essentially for the last few years you have a team with no real blocks to build around. The dry drafts of 2006-2011 came to haunt the Twins, As the recent drafted prospects mature, as the IFA start to mature you can have a core to build around. Then there is something that looks like a vision and the next management team will look so smart. Until they don't.

Anderson left the team. Gardy left the team. Johns has drafted more power arms for a quite a few years now. Ryan had traded for a more strikeout capable pitcher or two. Maybe that was the organization philosophical difference, Gardy got into Pohlad's ear and whispered they will never win without pitch to contact. Gardy turned on Ryan. (for the few who need the disclaimer) Not being serious that it was Gardy

If you like what someone else has and someone else likes what you do not you ought to make the trade. Realistically of the 17 pitchers over 25 that have pitched in AA, there isn't a major league starter amongst them, Maybe a couple of useful relievers in that group. A talented pitcher by trade for 3-4 years (a bird in hand) is far more valuable than the 17 birds that are flocking out in the bush

The premise would be incorrect. A bad defense would lead to more runners on base. Great pitching is still going to have issues with bad defense. The pitchers the Twins have now are no less mediocre than the ones not called Johan or Brad from over 10 years ago. Defense matters

No, but you proved the point I really couldn't say about trading AA pitchers is hersy. When 2 of the starters are not good enough to bring back a major return then they are not so talented that it would be heretical to trade them. When I made the remark as forgot that Hildenerger had been promoted to AA, although there are a couple of players drafter late that are not playing so poorly that they should be regulated to filler.

Oh, thousands of pardon me, mea culpas, I missed Matt Moore. They were talking of starting pitchers, not relievers. Not relievers who were starters in the minors. Not relievers who fans think should be starters either. The article was about developing starting pitching and evaluating an organization on that basis. I was referring to only the current team Rays team and the World Series team. So when you look at the current starters, for the Rays Archer was drafted and signed by Cleveland, Odorizzi by Milwaukee, Smyly by the Tigers, Andiese by the Padres, and Erasmo Rameres by the Mariners. Of those last 5, only Smyly had experience at the major league level. If you are judging a team's starting pitching develop by only the players drafted and retained by the team you are really limiting yourself. The point made by using the current Rays team as an example is that there are 4 pitchers they traded for with very limited or no major league experience as their starting pitchers is that they would have likely been impacted somewhat by the Rays coaching. . They could not start or be in the majors for their previous teams. Or they had very little mlb experience for their previous stops. There would be influences from their current coaching staffs to get them to the position of major league starter. That is why it is so limiting to look at only those drafted. Free agency is a different discussion as you have different kinds of free agents. I don't think Boston should get much credit for developing Price. Chicago signed Jose Quintana who was described by his previous GM to be a fringy prospect. White Sox did something right by him that the Yankees and Mets did not. As a fun exercise it is interesting to see who develops players well from cradle to grave, but baseball has long ago quit operating like that.

Trade, free agency, IFA as well as what you draft. By looking at the numbers of starters over that time period for each team I would say that just looking at who is still on your team that you drafted is a small portion of how a staff is formed. Snell is the only current Ray pitcher to have been drafted by the team. The rest were traded to them. The Rays used 9 starters in their world series year. Kazmir, Garza, and Jackson were all traded to them. Looking at only a small slice is really limiting. Garza had really good years with the Rays and one right away after h was traded again. Was it because it was his prime, or because of the coaching?

Nope. Gonzales had pitched 3 full seasons and a part of another when he was traded, Gray will have pitched 3 seaons and a part of another at the end of this year . nice try.