Richie the Rally Goat

Yeah, but they’re backed into a corner unless they don’t have a bench

That write up on Killebrew is awesome! As is the one on Sano. You can tell the author(s) love(s) baseball

Yeah, I was expecting (and kind of got) “Lewis keeps getting micturated upon” when in reality almost every minor leaguer lost 2020, almost every baseball player gets hurt and loses significant time, and prior to 1994, there were work stoppages every 3-4 years for several decades and pretty much everyone had to deal with those too. I think it’s Twins fans that need to calibrate expectations more than any event that was somehow thrust upon Lewis.

It was the right thing to do at the time and hasn’t hurt the team in any way since. maybe it didn’t work as the FO hoped, but I hope they do that deal again with Kirilloff or Rooker (or whomever the next budding, on the cusp type player is).

I’d put Baldelli 10-ish give or take a couple. of any sport, MLB managers matter the least during the game. As long as he’s not “bad”, I’m fine with. Job 1 is keeping the team engaged for 162 games which he is effective at. Job 2 is just don’t screw up bullpen/rest etc which he’s hit or miss. Job 3, pinch runners and hitters have been replaced by bullpen and DH. Baldelli instead. Needs to Listen to his coaches and be the input on hiring the right people, of which he is ok, not great

Isn’t there always 10 bottom third managers?

I think they’ll be motivated to get something in time to get all-star festivities and post season play. Once the window closes for allstar game, there might not be a season.

That rotation, Montas, Ryan, Odorizzi, Ober and Bundy would be somewhat competitive, at least enough that if the hitters really crush it, like 2019, they could legit contend for a division. Montas is a legit 150-175 inning starter, the rest of that motley crew tops out at 150 with Ober and drops to 100 or less very quickly. that’s maybe 600 innings but of the 1500 the team needs for the season if they all stay healthy and effective. As another poster mentioned, there’s 4-5 ifs there. half the innings pitched (after losing SWR who they need to supplement) comes from the farm (or Dobnak/Jax) at best. Probably more, someone is getting hurt. Nope, not buying that 5 man rotation as competitive

You should use it more

That was the whole point of the vaccine comment. Presumption of intent or halo effect misses the premises that the decisions actually use. my assumption is there is a reason owners don’t do the things outlined by Appel, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the team. My assumption is very few owners of baseball teams make any decisions based on trying to improve the quality of the team. My assertion is that Appel’s ideas make a lot of sense. Nothing more

Clearly I don’t have data to present, but if time value of money assumptions hold accurate, I use a 15% discount rate as back of the napkin math. Older players get higher salaries, even if the benefit evaporated upon graduation, 10% development faster (opposed to “better” is cheaper especially if the CBA is negotiated to a fixed age arbitration/free agency as major leaguers. Instead of letting players fit their offseason development time around a job, $25k per year per player (over a couple hundred players $5m) could save $15-20m per year in salaries pretty reasonably. An extra year, 2 years maybe at $600k vs paying arbitration up to free agency for 10+ players (rolling) seems feasible

1) you did, Seth. I followed Seth Speaks to the Strib, to TD. I lurked for about a year and created a login in 2013. 2) the community of posters. I love the endless debate. 3) love the multi-media (video, audio and written). Great to get the formats convenient in several ways

Agreed, adding that minor leaguers have very different bargaining positions than major leaguers. it’s amazing to me that the minor leaguers haven’t organized separately.

Very interesting idea! Ghost kitchens would be a great investment for an owner, and fill a part-time need for the team with a full time revenue generator. Options in small to medium cities can be very sparse. doordash food to whoever wants it, stock and staff it for your player’s enhanced nutritional needs.

I don’t like the hyperbole either. Name calling gets us nowhere. we can’t draw any conclusions. We’re making assumptions based on what we think we know. I don’t think the two assumptions you laid out, are really comprehensive. 1) not able to because of the rules. Possible, seems unlikely at first blush but with collective bargaining happening at one level, maybe there’s some threat mitigation rules with MLB/MiLB owners. 2) don’t want to for competitive reasons. There hasn’t been a compelling reason cost/benefit wise. 3) don’t care. Ambivalence is also a possibility. The cost benefit analysis has been done, but won’t see the light of day just because “it’s how we’ve always done it”. This is a league that is very steeped in tradition.

No I’m not saying that at all, quite the opposite. my contention is, if a team wants to out perform their peers, they should pay the players for their offseason workouts and support nutrition and such. I agree with Appel, generally

AAA is up to 150 games this season which fits. AA, A+ and A- only play 120, it’s April to August rookie ball is 75 games July/August spring training isn’t paid , and the players pay for their own transportation to report. Dobnak was an Uber driver, lots of players have seasonal/part-time jobs. Growing up, my next door neighbor was a minor league player and went to Florida every summer… he was a truck driver. if you are an MLB owner and you want to improve your team’s development better than anyone else, wouldn’t you want your players developing full time compared to other team’s part time? Wouldn’t that be a competitive advantage? again, what’s the motivation for the parties involved?

my allegory here is a thought exercise, not to spark a debate on vaccines. The Polio vaccine and the public campaign to vaccinate every child nearly eradicated one of the deadliest diseases in history. It saved millions of lives, saved hundreds of millions of dollars and was the single greatest public health campaign in modern history. We’ve seen nothing like it since. At the time there were conjectures that scientists could develop vaccines to prevent every virus, even the common cold. over the 70+ years since, there have been a few more vaccines invented, though not a ton in the grand scheme of things. The common cold is still very much a nuisance… mRNA vaccine development process was theorized in the early 90s, and one of the first applications of the genome mapping that took place in the early aughts. It took almost 20 years to be executed and tested. why? the polio treatment industry in the 1940s was one of the largest and most profitable segments of the healthcare industry that the public vaccination campaign eradicated in a decade. jumping back to current day, why might some public office holders be opponents of a $40 Covid vaccine proven to be highly effective and safe but proponents of therapeutics that require an emergency room stay and cost tens of thousands of dollars? The point is that we don’t know MLB owners, nor do we know MiLB players. What we do know is that people are frequently motivated by things that aren’t externally apparent. 1) what might be motivating Mark Appel to write this Twitter thread? Might he be motivated by something we don’t know about? His bio says he is an entrepreneur, could he be invested into businesses that might support these suggestions? 2) why might MLB owners not want to invest into minor league athletes off-season activities and in-season food. Why did MLB have to dictate the housing mandate? Could it be more than “cut-off your nose to spite your face”? Did Gleeman over-simplify the owners as bad people?

There are 40 rounds in the mlb draft. 25% is a minority, last I checked. the salary is just like school teachers, they get 500 per week for the season not for the whole year. the Twins paid their minor leaguers for the lost 2020 season, that cost them about 5 million, and they were the first to do it and one of about 5 teams to do it. 25 teams chose to pocket chump change rather than pay the players they had contracts with, that the league chose to cancel the season. The players didn’t opt out, the league did

I think you’ve touched on a key driver. Many if not all of the player strategies employed by MLB team organizations are in managing to the CBA. MiLB players are not represented in those negotiations.

great thread!

It’s no secret that the Twins rotation has holes. 2021 was a career year for Rodon, but he ended the season on the Il and the White Sox did not extend him. Is Rodon worth the risk and should the Twins sign him? What might the alternatives be to not sign him?

Mod note: please keep the subject to trading Sano/Donaldson as a result of DH rule change.

You've listed 5 maybe 6. Freeman, Castellanos, Rizzo, Scharber, McCutchen that would be better cheaper. Mark Canha is on a similar contract to Sano with similar wOBA, it's debatable that he'd be either better or cheaper. Kris Bryant as DH is preposterous and he's WAY more expensive than Sano. Signing Bryant and moving a 3B somewhere else would have happened regardless of DH rule and isn't impacted by the change or the DH market. Cruz was more expensive than Sano when there wasn't a newly universal DH. If 8-10 teams are looking to fil DH, that leaves 2-5 as potential places to trade Sano. There's potential value to be received.

Using Fangraphs standard leaderboard, Miguel Sano would have been the number 8 DH by wOBA. Yes the new entries to the pool will expand the market, but not that much. With 15 teams needing a DH (half to 2/3 acquiring from outside as a guess), prices will go up Name Team G PA HR R RBI SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA xwOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR playerid Shohei Ohtani LAA 158 639 46 103 100 26 15.00% 29.60% 0.335 0.303 0.257 0.372 0.592 0.393 0.408 152 2.5 43 -13.6 5.1 19755 Giancarlo Stanton NYY 139 579 35 64 97 0 10.90% 27.10% 0.243 0.324 0.273 0.354 0.516 0.37 0.358 137 -7 19 -12.4 2.6 4949 Yordan Alvarez HOU 144 598 33 92 104 1 8.40% 24.20% 0.253 0.32 0.277 0.346 0.531 0.369 0.389 138 0.5 28.6 -12.5 3.7 19556 J.D. Martinez BOS 148 634 28 92 99 0 8.70% 23.70% 0.232 0.34 0.286 0.349 0.518 0.364 0.374 128 -3.1 18.4 -11.4 2.9 6184 Josh Donaldson MIN 135 543 26 73 72 0 13.60% 21.00% 0.228 0.268 0.247 0.352 0.475 0.353 0.387 124 -4.3 12 -8.5 2.2 5038 Nelson Cruz - - - 140 584 32 79 86 3 8.70% 21.60% 0.232 0.286 0.265 0.334 0.497 0.346 0.358 122 -1.9 14 -14.3 2 2434 Ryan Mountcastle BAL 144 586 33 77 89 4 7.00% 27.50% 0.232 0.297 0.255 0.309 0.487 0.335 0.326 111 -1.2 6.6 -12.2 1.4 18373 Miguel Sano MIN 135 532 30 68 75 2 0.111 0.344 0.243 0.291 0.223 0.312 0.466 0.332 0.322 110 -2.2 4.4 -18.1 0.4 12164 Austin Meadows TBR 142 591 27 79 106 4 10.00% 20.60% 0.224 0.249 0.234 0.315 0.458 0.327 0.326 113 -1.7 7.5 -7.6 2 15672 Trey Mancini BAL 147 616 21 77 71 0 8.30% 23.20% 0.176 0.308 0.255 0.326 0.432 0.326 0.34 105 -5.3 -1.8 -12.7 0.6 15149 Jorge Soler - - - 149 602 27 74 70 0 11.10% 23.60% 0.209 0.25 0.223 0.316 0.432 0.323 0.354 101 -6.8 -6 -15.8 -0.2 14221 Jed Lowrie OAK 139 512 14 55 69 0 9.60% 21.10% 0.153 0.289 0.245 0.318 0.398 0.311 0.342 100 -1.6 -1.4 -7.5 0.9 4418 Miguel Cabrera DET 130 526 15 48 75 0 7.60% 22.40% 0.129 0.305 0.256 0.316 0.386 0.305 0.313 92 -6.3 -11.4 -13 -0.7 1744