Major League Ready

What would you do. Don't just say trade for an elite SP. Name specific players.

One of the more insightful posts I have ever seen here! Betting on any of the SPs in Group 1 has a very low probability of success. Just about any plan would be better this route. Group two has real potential but every one of those teams is looking to add not subtract with perhaps the exception of Cleveland and they are not trading a SP to us. Anyone in group 3 is a good solution. Which team is going to trade one of them? Houston / NY / LA – Absolutely no way. Nationals after just going all-in to sign Strasburg? The Mets after extending DeGrom and making several moves to compete now. No way. That leaves us with the Reds after trading for Bauer and extending Gray on what is now a team friendly deal. I seriously doubt it. Aces are like quarterbacks in terms of their impact in the post season. It makes perfect sense for us all to want one badly. However, before we criticize their failure to execute such a trade we should inventory the options just as we should do realistically with FA. I would sure like to see some specific examples of solutions instead of complaining as if there are lots of options. Who specifically should we target and why would their team be willing to give them up?

Cleveland still has a lot of talent but they don't have the payroll room to keep them. They will likely fade over the next couple years and it will be a while before their farm system can supply replacements. There is an interesting contradiction here where our team is concerned and the CWS. When our guys were unproven we should have traded them for proven players because prospects are just prospects until they prove something. Yet, Chicago is presumed to be a surefire contender.

Would you complain if he just shout his mouth and gave it his best shot? MANY times reps who worked for me told me he or she thought they were going to land a huge deal. Guess what some of those did not come to fruition through no fault of said representative. I did not belittle them for telling me they were focused on or all-in on a deal.

Hopefully our front office will not make decisions "without hesitation" not knowing if it will be a mistake. Obviously nobody is sure about these decisions but the willy nilly approach is not exactly the kind of critical thinking that should not be the practice used for anything with this type of impact. Fans are not responsible for mistakes so it's pretty easy to say just go do something even if it's wrong. That kind of desperation is not exact;y consistent with good leadership. Better to avoid a mistake and find a better alternative.

No argument here. Those are harder to identify. I put together this information last year when posters kept insisting signing this type of free agent was essential to winning, taking the next step, etc. Of course, there was never any proof of concept supplied so I wanted to educate myself as to the relative success or production of these contracts. It also is not really relevant to the specific argument for signing a given type of free agent so I never went down the path of guys that were extended.

Really, Eric Hosmer 8/144 was worth 36M for -.1 WAR. Had -.4 WAR for 2019? Jd Martinez 5/120 – Was great in 2018 and dropped off considerably in 2019. Cruz produced 1 WAR more than Martinez for half the money. Which investment helps the team to construct a winner? Was Arrieta – 3/75/AAV 25 a good investment having produced 1.9 WAR in 2018 and 1.1 WAR in 2019? The guy we settle for (Odorizzi) produced 2.6 WAR in 2018 and 4.3 WAR in 2019. Charlie Morton produced double the WAR for 60% of the AAV. Cain – 5/80M – Had a great first year in 2018. Last year he produced 1.5 WAR. Would you want him for 3/51 for his age 34-36 season? I would not. Wade Davis – Was he worth 17M AAV for .8 WAR in 2018 and negative WAR in 2019? 2017 Cespedes produced 2.5 total WAR for 2017-19. Fowler has averaged exactly 1 WAR over 3 years. Jansen was great in 2017 and has produced a total of 1.5 WAR over the past two seasons. David Price 7/217/AAV of #31M – He has been decent but not a difference maker. Quite good the 1st year (4.5 WAR). He has averaged 2.1 WAR over the past 3 years so he certainly has not been a difference maker and had we signed him he would likely be a detriment at 32M annually for the next 3 years. He most certainly would not have been “worth” the investment. The were several other big deals in 2017. The next 5 in AAV are Chris Davis / Jason Heyward / Johnny Cueto / Justin Upton Jordan Zimmerman, and Jeff Samardzija. Davis is below replacement level. Hayward is a 4th outfielder. Johnny Cueto had a great first year and has produced basically nothing ever since. Zimmerman produced 4.4 WAR over 4 years. Samardzjia was average in 2016, good in 2017 with 3.8 War and had .2 WAR in 2018 and 1.5 WAR in 2019. They received $924M collectively and produced a total of 32.4 WAR for 24 seasons collectively for an average of 1.35 WAR and an average cost of $28M per WAR. 2014 Robinson Cano 10/240/AAV 24 WAR 5.6 / 2.8 / 6.2 / 3.2 / 2.9 / .8 Cano produced quite well though his age 37 season. The problem was this was an absurd length. His remaining 4 year 96M remaining contract will be a serious impediment the next 4 yrs. Jacoby Ellsbury 7/153/AAV 21.1. One particular poster here lobbied very hard for him back when he was signed. Just over 1 WAR per year for 21M/year. Is that a good way to build a winner? WAR 3.5 / 1.1 / 1.7 / 1.6 / 0 / 0 / 0 Ave 1.13 Shin-Soo Choo 7/130/AAV 18.6. He averaged 1.5 WAR. / 2013 Josh Hamilton 5/125/AAV25. Now that was worth it. WAR 1.3 / 1.1 / .4 / 0 / 0 Ave .56 / 44.46M per 1WAR Melvin Upton 5/72.5/AAV 14.5 WAR -.9 / 0 / 1.5 / 1.3 / 0 Ave .38 / 38.16M per 1WAR 2012 Alber Pujlos 10/240/AAV 24 WAR 3.3 / .5 / 2.7 / 1.6 / .7 / -1.9 / -.2 / -.4 Ave .79 / 28.7M per 1WAR and they still have two years / 59M remaining, likely at replacement level. Prince Fielder 9/214/AAV 23.77 WAR 5.0 / 2.7 / -.4 / 2.0 / .7 / -1.9 / 0 / 0 / 0 Ave .95 / 26.75M per 1WAR CJ Wilson 5/77.5/AAV 15.5 WAR 2.2 / 3.2 / .7 / 1.5 / 0 / Ave 1.52 / 10.19.75M per 1WAR Failures on the scale Pujlos, Hamilton and Fielder would sink our team for several years. So, I can’t agree with your position they are worth whatever the market pays.

What about the Giants. Three WS wins in the past 10 years and 4th overall in revenue. Astros are doing quite well too. Got to include the Cubs too. They have the 5th most revenue. The Cubs are just suffering the effects of 3 big contracts producing very little which is enough to nullify much of their revenue advantage. However, you have an undeniable point. The revenue gap has grown wide between the top and the bottom. The big market teams have gotten smarter. Billy Beane was on Jim Duquette's show a few days ago talking about how all the teams value assets the same now. In the past, big market teams traded away prospects for proven talent. The premium paid for the immediate production ended up favoring the teams trading for prospects. Obviously, the big market teams are placing a greater premium on prospects. The Dodgers are a great example (Duquette did not use this example). Going back a few years they acquired several proven players and had a massive payroll. That produced mediocre teams. Their most productive players are homegrown now. The biggest FA expenditure since Andrew Friedman took over was Kenley Jansen and they don't trade top prospects.

Are we blaming the FO for Pineada's suspension now?

Could there be another reason besides competence that these teams spend more than the Twins. Just spitballing here but could the difference in landing the highest price free agents be that in 2018 these teams averaged $180M more in revenue than the Twins. I mean collectively these teams had over a billion dollars more revenue than the Twins for a single season. $1,260,000 actually. I going to go out on a limb and say that had something to do with it.

I just listened to an interview with Falvey on Power Alley. Hopefully, he put on his pants to go out for the interview.

I was going to say I am not sure how you missed value equals wins until I realized I just got done saying that I presumed just such a response. I made it clear in the post that the FO was seeking value per dollar spent. Of course, if we could spend infinitely, the amount spent would be meaningless and your position would have merit. Of course, that is not the case which is why I bothered to address productivity per dollar spent and the concept that the amount of wins per dollar spent eventually equates to the most wins for the team. Let’s translate the analogy to an example. Last year, the Twins could have (theoretically) signed Harper for 10/300M ass ome suggested here or we could sign use the $30M to add Cruz, Gonsales, Cron, and Schoop. For an AAV of $31M. Collectively, they produced 7 WAR. I will eagerly await your explanation as to how 7 is not greater than 3.1?

We will just have to agree to disagree on the value premise. The value premise is essential to winning for teams with lower revenue. It's basically a linear relationship. The less revenue you have compared to the top revenue teams, the more value per dollar spent you MUST achieve in order to win as many games as said competitor with more revenue. IE. The Yankees can spend twice as much as the Twins. Therefore, the Twins have to have double the production per dollar to win an equal number of games. We seem to understand this with the Rays and As but refuse to acknowledge it with our team. Fans of teams where a spending cap exists tend to be rather sophisticated where spending is concerned. There are people who literally make fun of this premise here when it is literally a mathematical certainty. Honestly, it bugs me because fans are mad for no good reason. The FO is following practices that are proving to be successful around the league. They are acting in the fans best interest. We had 100 wins last year and are positioned to win for the next several seasons. I agree with everyone else we need another good SP and I really don't know if Bumgarner, Ryu or someone else is the best candidate but I am not going to hate the FO because they did not sign a free agent who wanted to be someone else, especially given that team can pay for 3 players like him and still have the Twin's budget leftover. It's just not reasonable to expect to win that battle. We have to find other ways to win. The Rays got better production out of Charlie Morton at 2/30 than the national got out of Corbin for 6/140. The Yankees got better production out of LeMahieu for 2/24 than the Padres got out of Machado for 10/300 or we can use the 1 yr example of Donaldson in Atlanta or Mustakis producing similar WAR for 1/3 of the price in Milwaukee. Brantley (2/32) produced almost the same WAR has Harper.

I wanted Wheeler badly too. To be honest, I typed out a very simple response saying Brodie Van wagenen was on MLB radio and he did not think Wheeler was worth that kind of money because the premise we should have just spent whatever it takes is fanatical and nothing I say will be acceptable. However, I am going to tell you why I don’t have the same response to losing Wheeler as others here. Wheeler wanted to go to Philly. In this type of negotiation, the agent is going to bounce back in forth between the clubs driving up the price but in the end the agent is going to give Philly the shot. The assumption here is that 118 was Philly’s final offer. Who is to say they should not be equally motivated. This is not Falvine’s first rodeo. At some point they probably realized they were being played and the only way they were getting Wheeler was at a price that no longer made sense at which point they probably dropped out. Even if the assumption that 118 was a high as the Philly’s were willing to go, the premise that if he is worth 105 he is worth 125 is also fanatical. We all make this sort of judgment call in our own lives on a frequent basis. I would guess everyone here has seen a vehicle that interested them only to find out it have every gadget known to man and carried a price they were not willing to pay. I can assure you the team has a far more sophisticated methodology for establishing value that we have as fans. When they stop bidding, profit may have some weight but the primary emphasis is the most effective utilization of the dollars. In other words, they believed the best way to produce wins was to invest elsewhere. Fans of sports with a salary cap embrace this premise. They despise bad contracts because it hinders building a winner. Posters here must have heard the grumbling of Wolves fans over Wiggins getting a max contract. There is an also an absolutely indisputable premise that gets ignored here. As a matter of fact people make fun of the value premise. However, the reality is that the Minnesota Twins have to produce more wins per dollar spent than half the teams in this league. Therefore, some players make much more sense for teams that have enough revenue to pay for a player and still have the Twin’s budget left over. Philly's incremental revenue covers wheeler 3X. Some teams can sign several Wheelers and still have the Twins budget left over. The problem here is that many people refuse to recognize this reality so they take the stance the Twins are just interested in profit. Two-thirds of the people who read this will not stop for 10 seconds to consider if this is reasonable. They will be busy thinking up something to blast me with as they read it.

Yes Scherzer has been great. None of the very top FA SPs have been a bust. The next tier (like Wheeler / Bumgarner) have been pretty brutal. I went through all of the years. I kept it to these years in the previous post because these contracts were completed when I did this last year. 2016 was a big year for contracts with substantial length. Greinke actually opted out and signed another 6 year deal in 2016. As noted he has been good. David Price signed for 7/217/AAV of #31M – He has been decent but not a difference maker. Quite good the 1st year (4.5 WAR). He has averaged 2.1 WAR over the past 3 years so he certainly has not been a difference maker and I am glad we don’t have him for the next 3 years at $96M There were 6 other contracts of 5 or more years. Chris Davis / Jason Heyward / Johnny Cueto / Justin Upton / Jordan Zimmerman, and Jeff Samardzija. Davis is below replacement level. Heyward has been slightly above replacement value. Johnny Cueto had a great first year and has produced basically nothing since. Zimmerman produced 4.4 WAR over 4 years. Samardzjia was average in 2016, good in 2017 with 3.8 War and had .2 WAR in 2018 and 1.5 WAR in 2019. They received $924M collectively and produced a total of 32.4 WAR for 24 seasons collectively for an average of 1.35 WAR. Of course there is at least 1 year left on all of these contracts.

The same question was brought up last year. I wondered about the relative merit of building a winning team with these contracts and how often they were a burden that actually ended up negatively impacting the team. I ran the numbers for free agents signing 5+ year deals from 2012-2014. These are the most recent years in which 5 year deals would have run to completion when I did this last year. Here is what I found. Cano and Grienke stood out by a considerable margin. Of course, Cano’s deal is looking like the last 5 years will be around replacement level. The remaining 10 players only averaged 1.41 WAR. In 53 cumulative seasons, the entire group only managed 3 season above 4 WAR, two by Cano and one by Fielder. The group produced 17 seasons above 2 WAR while producing 36 season at 2 WAR or less.

No, I was referring to the metrics. So, if you prefer I qualify the statement with "according to the metrics", considered my statement qualified as being according to the metrics.

That's a pretty emphatic statement that it would be pathetic given you provide no supporting information. Have you calculated break-even and what are you using as a reasonable profit in determining they could spend $150 on payroll and still have money left over for extensions. You also forgot they will need money for arbitration increases next year to retain several key players Cruz will be coming off but we might want to keep him around another year too.

Speed does promote better defense but Rosario does not have plus speed and he is a below average defender so it would appear you are going out of your way to try to prove he is something that he is not.

I was wondering the same thing. Just glad they got one of the two as I thought they were the best fit here.

I thought 140M or perhaps a little more is reasonable given the increase in revenue last year. The roster below is missing a SP, a replacement for Cron and 2 RPs. I show 98.5M.. Bumgarner, 2 RPs and a replacement for Cron fit within that 140-145M plan. Maybe even Strasburg. I just don't see strasburg wanting to come here.

You can't possible believe this is logical. It amazes me that some people refuse to accept something so common as the notion of allocating their own money to things they think are a good value. The concept that a team with average or less than average revenue has to get more production per dollar of payroll is slightly more complex but far from difficult to understand.

If you can't find the point, me explaining will not help.

Thanks for sharing some rational thinking. If US Bank acquired another bank, they would assess the value of that business and set a maximum value they would be willing to pay and walk if it could not be acquired at the price they determined. That’s called good management. For some reason many here think the Minnesota Twins should not operate under the same basic principles as any other business. Let’s put it in more personal terms. If an individual goes to buy a home valued at $360K and there are multiple offers that somehow escalated the price to 472K, is it a good decision to pay $472K because you really want it. What if the seller says … I really want to sell to these other people so matching is not adequate? You will need to pay $500K. How many people here would just go for it? BTW …. I used the same ratios present in the Wheeler deal to produce these figures. The expectation the Twins should ignore their valuation and just throw around a hundred million like it is chump change is exceptionally naïve. It never happens. It’s just not that easy for any team and much harder for a mid revenue or less team. I keep asking for those who say they should just do regardless of cost to show me examples of another ML team with the Twins revenue or less who has “just gone for it” and it worked out. Some of you elect to ignore the facts. I welcome anyone who rebuts this notion to prove me wrong with facts. Two teams of similar or less revenue have ever signed such deals. Grienke when the Diamonds landed a billion dollar TV contract. They went nowhere and finally traded him. The other is Mike Hampton. Colorado went nowhere with him. They had 73 wins in each of the first 2 years of his 8 year deal and they traded him. He produced less than 3 WAR over his 8 year contract. Are all of the GMs of similar teams just incompetent that they can’t see paying whatever it takes to get a front of the rotation FA or do fans just not understand why it’s not a good practice to pay whatever it takes?

You are not alone. Many fans subscribe to the push all in theory and there were more GMs in the past who subscribed albeit to a lesser degree. The new breed of baseball executive has a background that precludes this type of immediate term decision making. They are paid to sustain success. We don't expect players to accept less pay when the team is bad so we should not expect teams to manage in a manner that will lead to bad teams in the future.