Major League Ready

Like you, I don't understand the hurry. he is not going to be promoted to the majors this year. He needs to work on command. Next year, they will have Zebby, Festa, Varland, and Morris at AAA. That's plenty of depth to start the season even if they send Varland to the BP. Lewis, Raya, Nowlin, and Prielipp can determine a pecking order to replace these guys at AAA as the AAA guys get their shot.

I meant that Tampa has done quite a few deals where they move a player in a depth position and get some major league contribution and prospects. Quite a few fans are very focused on the benefits of a trade like this one being immediate. Those fans don't like these deals but Tampa and Cleveland have used this model to significantly outperform other organizations anywhere near their revenue level. They have literally produced more WAR from players acquired as prospects than they have the draft. If they had kept Polanco, he is playing even if he sucks. Their other options provide greater flexibility and therefore a higher probability of success. If Julien sucks, they can send him down. Castro is option 2. If Lee proves ready they can utilize Castro in a utility role and play Lee at 2B. If Miranda bounces back they play him at 3rd and Lewis to 2nd was also an option. I would bet they felt more confident in getting production out of that group vs Polanco alone. Of course, they also netted $9.75M to be invested elsewhere. Then, there was DeScalfani. He was a risk but they may just have seen that potential contribution as a bonus. I think they projected this trade as a net gain. If they got lucky with DeSclafani an even better net and the prospects were a bonus.

18 hours ago you said "My position, from the day the Twins announced the trade, has been it made the Twins weaker in 2024" You were wrong. I would accept your admission you were wrong but you didn't give it. We are all going to be wrong in these predictions. I thought Julien would be an above average player. Maybe he will be someday but as of this moment I was wrong.

And your position was wrong. It most certainly did not make the Twins weaker in 2024. I know exactly what my position was because I took a lot of grief from a handful of people that insisted it was a no brainer that losing Polanco was going to be horrible. The return turned out to be a worst-case scenario for 2024 and it still did not hurt the team. I also don't advocate running the team with only the present year in mind. That's a really good way to assure you will be bad often.

How is the team not better with Santana VS Polanco? I guess you just ignore the player acquired with those funds if it suits your narrative. Also, your position back then was that it was obvious the team would be better with Polanco and that has been proven false in spades.

6 of the Twins top 10 position players by WAR and 7 of the top 10 pitchers were drafted or acquired as prospects. I just don't understand the logic that says most will fail so none of them matter. It's because most fail that it does matter. That's why we have a couple hundred of them. Prospects doing well and moving up these lists increase the odds of them making it. The fact that most fail is the reason we should be encouraged by prospects performing well. There is nothing nearly as important as developing unproven players, especially to small and mid-market teams. Marginalizing the most important element of success for a MLB team just does not make sense to me.

There were a few people who advocated for keeping Polanco. Others said we had a few better options at 2B and the money should be spent on pitching. I don't know how you conclude the team would have been better off with Polanco. He is a replacement level player at this point. His salary went to signing Santana, DeSclafani, and Margot. DeSclafani netted nothing but Santana has definitely made this team better and while Margot has sucked as a PH, he will be an asset starting against LHP in the playoffs. Farmer and Thielbar were completely independent decisions. Farmer had played an important role in the past and there was no reason to believe he would fall off a cliff. That said, I said at the time I would move them and spent the money on pitching. I just don't agree with the concept that the only trade that's a good trade is one that makes the current team better. Cleveland has produced more war over the past two decades from players acquired as prospects than they have produced from the draft. Falvey is following Tampa's lead. They make trades like this one where the current team is better off or not worse off while collecting assets that make future teams better.

They knew they had Castro and Lee if Julien / Farmer did not work. It was the depth of alternatives that made moving Polanco less risky and every analyst that commented stated this in some form or another as did many TD posters.

I wanted them to get one of the Mariners starters as well. Many other teams wanted to get their SPs too. Seattle wanted to keep them and the only way to get them was a huge overpay. The Twins and every other team looking for pitching were not willing to pay what Seattle was asking. These arguments get made every year as if teams have to do what we want. What if they would have kept Polanco and signed Hoskins like so many here insisted would be a huge difference maker. We would be worse had they spent the money in that fashion. There were also quite a few people that said trade Polanco and dump Farmer if necessary to get another SP. That could have been done within the allotted budget so money was not the difference between success and failure. They could have signed Flaherty or Lugo with the budget they had to work with.

I quoted and answered a post that asked "wondering why they use so many and why/how they seem to be successful" I even highlighted that part of the original post in my response. I am not refuting your position in the slightest. Nor did I even comment on your position. My position has actually always been very similar to what you have been saying long before this thread. There is something to be learned from the success of the teams with less financial resource that have significantly outperformed other organizations over the course of the last couple decades. There is a lot of heated debate here about how assets should be managed without any supporting evidence of what has worked for the most successful teams with a revenue disadvantage.

How they have been successful relying on their farm system is pretty simple. They do a good job of trading established players for prospects much like the Rays. If you look at their best teams (most wins), those teams produced more WAR from players acquired as prospects than they did from the draft. (25.5% vs 44.5%) 7 Cleveland Guardians WINS Drafted Intl AaP Trade FA 100% Cleveland 2017 102 24.3% 19.3% 44.3% 4.3% 7.8% 100% Cleveland 2007 96 30.5% 38.2% 31.3% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2016 94 33.1% 22.7% 44.2% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2019 93 34.0% 17.8% 44.1% 4.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2005 93 7.5% 21.8% 51.4% 2.5% 16.8% 100% Cleveland 2022 92 34.2% 19.7% 46.2% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2013 92 14.9% 0.0% 50.1% 10.2% 24.8% Guardians Total 94.57 25.5% 19.9% 44.5% 3.0% 7.1%

Oakland is presently in a down cycle. However, the 1st 20 years of this century they were better than most. They had (8) 93-win seasons. One more than STL. The Astros, Cubs, Giants, and Twins had 4. The Phillies and Nationals had 3. The Padres had zero. The Blue Jays and 2 others had 1 while the Padre and 2 others had zero. They also had the 6th best win percentage which was almost 100 points higher than the Royals. Sometimes the measure of success seems to be dollars spent over wins achieved. 93 Wins Win % 1 Yankees 13 0.583 2 Red Sox 11 0.553 3 Oakland 8 0.534 4 Cardinals 7 0.536 5 Braves 7 0.559 6 Angels 6 0.480 7 Dodgers 5 0.550 8 Cleveland 5 0.531 9 Astros 4 0.516 10 Giants 4 0.502 11 TWINS 4 0.518 12 Cubs 4 0.493 13 Tampa 3 0.500 14 Mariners 3 0.502 15 Rangers 3 0.483 16 Dbacks 3 0.492 17 Phillies 3 0.497 18 Nationals 3 0.500 19 Tigers 3 0.500 20 Brewers 2 0.505 21 Mets 2 0.449 22 White Sox 2 0.467 23 Orioles 2 0.494 24 Pirates 2 0.469 25 Blue Jays 1 0.494 26 Reds 1 0.455 27 Royals 1 0.441 28 Rockies 0 0.471 29 Marlins 0 0.469 30 Padres 0 0.465

Dobnak is guaranteed $3M next year. The Twins would trade him for a case of Gatorade if another team was willing to give him a chance to start,

That's a really interesting odds summary. It really gets to the core of the discussion here of the impact of what they did or did not do on the likelihood of winning the WS. The Twins had a 6.3% chance of winning the WS before the deadline moves. You are good with numbers and analysis. How much would you estimate the Twins odds would have gone up had they traded for say Kikuchi and Scott?

Maybe but not under the same terms. There will be broader distribution that includes a direct streaming option in some form. That might be a streaming service that bundles sports packages, but you won't have to subscribe to a cable provider or Youtube TV to get the streaming service.

For what it's worth MLB.com slotted him as the Marlins #7 prospect and have a 50 FV on him. Obviously, opinions vary on many players. Perhaps the Dbacks were asking for a 50 FV and their assessed value of De Los Santos was closer to MLB.com than Fangraphs.

We should add Flaherty to the discussion as well. They got a pretty good catching prospect so I seriously doubt Gonzalez or Raya would have gotten it done. Maybe Festa but probably Keaschall or Rodriquez.

Puk brought a 50FV prospect. Kikuchi brought back two major league ready players and a AAA player. Bloss looks to be at least equivalent to Festa. What would comparable packages have looked like from the Twins?

Here are the teams in the bottom half of revenue that have won a WS since 2000. Dbacks in 2001, Marlins in 2003, White Sox in Chicago in 2005, and KC in 2015. If a WS title is how we define success, these are the the most successful teams. KC has (1) 90 win season in the past 25 years and has the worst win percentage of any team in MLB. The White Sox have had (1) 90-win season in the past 17 years. The Marlins are a mess. The Dbacks have had (1) 90-win season in the past 13 years and rank 22nd in win percentage. The Twins rank 13th. One team in the bottom half of revenue has won a WS in the last 19 years so the response "have they won a WS" is a not so clever way of refusing to look at meaningful measures like how many times they put a playoff caliber team on the field. That's a reasonable measure of how well a team has built rosters. How often does adding players lead to winning a WS. If a dozen teams add players, the probability of one of those teams winning the WS is 8.3%. What is the probability that those players are the difference in winning the WS. Let's say 50% which is generous. The probability of winning the WS as a result of adding players is about 4%. Shouldn't we be asking which organizations have produced the most playoff teams and then ask how they constructed those teams?

That's now how it works. This is what actually happened not what would have happened if they traded for established players. If they won 90 games on average 11.9% WAR came from trading for established players. You also skipped over the part where 29% of their WAR came from trading for established players. Therefore, when considering how every player was acquired for literally every team in the bottom half of revenue for the last 2+ decades, we can say that trading for prospects produced almost 3X the WAR as trading for established players. It is also noteworthy that the bar for established player is a player that had produced a 1.5 WAR season. That's obviously not the kind of player posters here were looking for. Up the bar to a player that has produced 2.1 WAR and the ratio would go to 4-5X.

The have been a total of (30) 94 win+ seasons since 2000 among the bottom 16 teams in revenue. Listed below is the percentage of WAR produced by source of acquisition. 34.2% Draft / 8.6% Intl Draft / 29.9% Players acquired as Prospects / 11.3% Trades for established players / 16.1% Fres Agents. The bar I used for established player was having produced 1.5+ WAR in any season. Obviously, a low bar and not the type of player being discussed here. Had I used players that had produced a 2.5 WAR type season, I would estimate that percentage would have been cut in half. What does this tell us about the most effective way to construct a contender?

This is consistent with what Falvey said but the fans who are upset are going to ignore any reports that provide a reasonable narrative.

You perspective is a few years out of date. The RSNs are falling apart and the cable companies are no longer willing to include regional sports without a surcharge. MLB.TV just announced out of market coverage for $5.99/month. The "clear print-fest" is long gone.

What does "overall excellence" mean to you. The Royals won the WS in 2015 and they are the only team in the bottom half of revenue in recent history. They also have the worst win / loss record over the past couple of decades. What team with similar revenues to work with is managing for overall excellence in your view?

It’s not a product of laziness. These guys are devoted and put in a lot of effort. We had articles almost daily bemoaning the reduction in spending in some form or another so there is plenty of effort. It’s a product of a total lack of objectivity which would not be so bad if it was not presented as a factual account. The BAM money is a glowing example. Had we been set to receive BAM money last year, and not increased payroll, I would bet the writers here would have been all over the BAM money angle. We had dozen of articles that completely ignored the loss of revenue from BAM even after I brought it to their attention several times. There is absolutely no way that every author here who wrote these articles missed the numerous times I brought it up. This is not a last year issue. There has not been a topic with more interest and more debate over the years than spending and there is not a more common theme than “cheap Pohlads”. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, there has never been one article comparing Twins percentage of revenue devoted to payroll to the rest of the league. How is a topic with so much interest never addressed in an objective way by the writers here? It’s not even hard to put together. I would think the same writers that are so distraught with Twins spending would be eager to illustrate to the world that the Pohlads are cheap instead of just insisting it's so.