The Wise One

In Abreu's defense Small sample size Upside? Yippee, I won the lottery. It took a year for the teams to learn Cespedes's tendencies and how to attack the weak points. Abreu should be able to kill mistake pitches and thus continue to make a living.

Baxendale fit more the low ceiling c prospect mold with an average fb at best Boer was coming off a hand injury Melotakis, Boer and Duffey are converting to starters, that takes a few ticks off the FB and hence strikeouts as they build strength. It is a process. They can always go back to be being relievers. Boer probably should have been back in the pen by now

The Twins drafted more power arms in 2012. Stewart last draft. In the past they have drafted power arms that failed to develop. Adam Johnson being the the most glaring example, but many of their 2nd round pitchers were higher velocity pitchers that fizzled .

From the article On the bigger question of whether teams get “extra credit” for their development success, it does play at least a small factor in how we rank players. In our discussions, organizations that have demonstrated consistent success in developing pitchers (the Rays and Cardinals are two that come to mind) lead to some expectation that their next wave of pitchers are also more likely to fix some of their remaining flaws before they reach the big leagues. It’s not a significant factor in our rankings, but it gets mentioned whenever we’re lining up Top 100 Prospect lists and our other rankings. To ashburyjohn. In regards to the Wacha thread comment. The question that the real smart minor league people here might know the answer to is this. Very few players come without flaws. Recently the Cards, Rays and Braves are all identified as teams that developed pitching. The question is then were the Twins drafting pitchers with less upside and fewer flaws or were they drafting similar to others and doing a poor job of coaching? They may have been drafting safer, hence there is no one with a Wacha fastball to develop.

Your uncle spent his own money. Ryan works for someone with a directive. Ryan may well have values and want to not spend more than what he values. Ryan works for a family that has values. They also got their money through getting maximal return on their investment. There are parameters spending. Some have said Smith wanted to spend more was the philosophical difference. See where it got him. Ryan may say all he has to do is ask, but he also knows the parameters on when to ask.

Now my basic statistics was quite a few years ago, so please feel free to correct me. In any of these ERA predictors you have to consider their correlations SIERA is said to be 0.72. Good, but hardly precise. There is a regression factor. RMS data shows that factor to be greater than 1 for all the calculators for IP less than 200. Standard deviation of 0.5. Essentially their measurement could be up to a 0.5 worth of ERA wrong. One way or the other. 4.64 by SIERA is the predictive value, by deviation then the predictor says anywhere in the 4 range. Now SIERA does not ignore balls in play. To be an accurate predictor things have to be static. The one thing Twins fan hope for is for is for things not to be static. The predictors say he will be a better pitcher than last year. None say he will be a great pitcher. That is about all you can take away from this.

Wacha and Miller were slot 19 in the first round. Garcia was out of hs taken late in the draft. I am only guessing but he may have told scouts he was going to college. The Cards convinced him otherwise and the rest is history. There are a lot of one year very successful pitchers on the Cardinals this year. Time will tell if it is sustainable.

There are two things to note what the Cardinals are doing. One is that they are going after very good fastballs. They have plus speed and movement with the ability to vary it enough to not get killed. Second is pitch to contact. They don't walk many. The difference is the Twins went after a sinkerball type whereas the Cardinals went after the fastball type. Conventional wisdom says a starting pitcher should have command of 3 pitches. Wacha is fastball change. Miller is a fast and faster FB with the occasional change and curve.

The compensation rules have changed. I doubt the Twins will be signing a 14/mil player anyway.

What you can't teach is consistency and a high speed fastball. If Twins pitchers could consistently hit their spots and only made only an occasional mistake pitch the results would be that much different. The coach can coach the mechanics and teach the how to pitch, it is on the pitcher to do it. So, with that being said is the problem with the Twins they throw poor pitch selection or they throw poorly enough times to let the batter wait for a poorly thrown pitch? How many times did it look like the pitch wasn't what the pitcher intended? Is that the coaching or the pitcher?

You posted, you made it your argument with your take. Yep, Epstien took a very good club and added a few more pieces and won 2 championships before sagging. . Far different than starting over. The vision on how to build the Chicago team is Epstien's not the GM. That does not appear to be the case with the Twins. How you chose to see it is your choice

Travis Wood That you cannot distinguish a difference between revenues when he has teams in the dome and Target Field says it all.

Yes the current team resources could be compared to the Giants. Some of the issues that led to the current state can be tied to the time less than 5 years ago when they were not on an equall footing.

Ever find a quote about what Hoyer thinks on how the Cubs should run? Easy to find quotes about what Epstien thinks. You said how they brought in all of these international free agents as a sign of doing good work. Excuse for asking how the results of his past work turned out. He signed a lot of players. Woo hoo. How good was his past work? Ryan's past work appears to be game for criticism, but not what Epstien has done? You said how great the trades were by the Cubs. Did it improve their team dramatically in the last two years? When was the last time an organaization with Epstien made a great trade 08? It really isn't a comparison of individuals but organizations. By placing names of people rather than organization it does give you a way to obscure the argument.

Garza, Rizzo, Soto, Santana, Samardzija, Dempster, Wood were all such poor players. You are right. Epstien had nothing when he took over the Cubs. Funny you can only mention one player on the major league roster over the last 2 years as an asset and no others playing above A ball when he took back over. Ryan got lucky that Blanton and Saunders did not want to play here. How many others rejected overtures. And no, I don't have any idea who he asked either. He took a risk that Willingham would stay healthy. He took a risk that Doumit could maintain an .800 OPS. He took a risk that Pelfrey would come back quickly from major surgery. How do you know he did not negotiate with any other players? Resisting dealing premier talent? What premier talent? Mauer has a no trade clause. Span and Revere are good players no longer in a Twins uniform. Did he have any premier talent in A+or above last winter? Hicks.The other centerfielders were traded, couldn't deal Hicks. Who should have he dealt the last 2 years? Premier talent. Willingham? The winter before he was bargain basement. You think somebody would give up premier talent back for 1 good year? After Revere and Span there was nothing left to deal.

The claim was you can't rebuild from where the Twins are at in 23 months. Thyrlos claimed they rebuilt in 23 months. I simply stated how he was wrong. While the teams you mentioned did rebuild and had not fallen as far as the Twins have at any point, that really is of little consequence at this point. Even now as the Giants need to rebuild again they have 4 things the Twins do not. A RF, 1B, and Ace with a #2 starter. Ryan is the general manager, Smith was. What was done was done. Going forward Ryan is the GM. Either he and his team rebuild the Twins or they don't. From the point he took back over the team the cupboard was pretty bare. Some things he is going to have to change from how he did it before. He is going to have to spend more. The whole process is going to take time. Ryan is going to have to learn how to judge the free agent market better. He is loathe to sign free agents that are marginally better than the players he has. If he wants the Twins to be near .500 that will have to change. I doubt the fans will come out strong for that kind of team but others posting seem to want that. My impression is Pohlad wants a team that will sell out Target Field and make him money. That is going to be difficult to do for next year. A lot will depend on the market for players in the mid tier range. Ryan has got to find a few that fall between the cracks like Cleveland did for short term success. Ryan doesn't usually work that way, but that too will have to change. Ryan will be the GM and Gardenhire the coach for the next 2 years. If there is no success beyond what the prospects bring, they will be gone after that.

What the A's, Cards and Rays have done shows that you can't rebuild in a short period of time. They also show that to get premier talent you have to trade premier talent. Building in that manner does not happen quickly. A couple of bad trades of the premier talent will set you way back. That is something these teams have not done. What was the last international free agent of the 16 year old variety Epstien signed that made it to the big leagues? Last trade his organization made that brought success was 2008?

Detroit had 19 years between playoffs, Cleveland 5 years, Baltimore 14 years. That is how long it took them to rebuild. How much of Boston losing can be pinned on bad manager?

IIRC there was a ton of praise thrown Epstien's way about his use of Sabermetrics, signing a lot of international players, signing and trading free agents, and in general calling him everything great and Terry Ryan is not this season. There will be comparisons to how different approaches work over the same period of time. Epstien in his role would appear to have a lot more oversight and direction to his GM so it is easy to forget there is a GM in Chicago. Epstien's role looks from the outside to be similar to Ryan's. So if whatever the Cubs are doing has nothing to do with the Twins, your complaint is long overdue. Whatever Epstien has directed has not produced results any better than what Ryan has produced and thus takes away an avenue to criticize Ryan. I would suspect a few people are not happy about that. I would also think that a few people after the past in season lovefest for all things Cubs are happy to point out said failures as an "excuse" for the Twins not doing similar to what the Cubs are doing.

Not to be nit picky but Burnett, Parker, Cobb and Achter, this just off the top of my head, were traded to their teams

Rather than renovate a bad stadium the Rays move north, change their name to a new corporate sponsor and are called the Minnesota Targets. For 2008 flush with cash and a fan base so starved for a winner they come out, added Torii Hunter to play RF and WS championships would have followed.

A site IIRC you have quoted from MLB Team Values: The Business Of Baseball - Full List - Forbes If using fingers, thumbs and toes were correct, it comes out to about 65 million per team. Not 80/yr, but still a significant number when posted as $65000000. That is still half of what the Twins payroll could be in difference. That is Greinke, Lee, and Sabathia's contract. The average difference for 5-10 comes closer to 25 million by eyeball. That is just a Greinke contract difference.

If it isn't on paper, it isn't much of a contract. You and the others who go on about this sort of thing have got to realize there is no such contract. No sane baseball team would ever enter into that sort of contract. The Twins were a break even or lose money franchise until 04. They are not so stupid as to realize with attendance going down what will happen to their bottom line. That drives the product on the field.

If only there was a standard definition of high quality free agent.