Jham

To be fair, Mauer and his agent suggested that he would not give a hometown discount. At the time he signed, experts were throwing the $300 mil number around. I'd also say that the Mauer deal should certainly not dissuade anyone from signing a player in his prime to a contract lasting beyond it. Finally, I question how many years we spent rebuilding when we could have been competing. And the years we were competing how many we could have contended. And in the years we could do neither, how much player equity we could have acquired at the trade deadline had we had more than Eduardo Nunez and Kevin Correia to deal. Can't trade a half season of Ardolis Chapman for a ransom if you never sign him in the first place.

More affordable to the average middle class family: 15 yr fixed or 30 yr fixed mortgage? 15 yr is a better value (potentially) but not feasible for people on limited incomes (payroll constraints). Doesn't mean you shouldn't buy a house if you can only afford the 30 yr. Might be your only option in fact.

As soon as mlb addresses tanking and hording profits/ profit shares maybe.

That's easy. The price of JD Martinez is dropping. Boston apparently out. Zona low balling. JD considering shorter deals.

Source? Where'd this come from all the sudden.

Consider the following possibilities based on your observation vis a vis labor sentiment on the site. 1) you, who have bemoaned the current state of affairs but haven't made a single suggestion as how to improve things for anyone but the cost sensitive fan, could be right and everyone wrong. 2) everyone else might be on to a little something that you're failing to grasp. Fixing player salaries is basically socialism. Fixing ticket prices and concessions is socialism. There may be times where human nature (greed) exceeds the balance of free market enterprise, but this hardly seems like that time. Not to say we don't need to be careful, but costs aren't out of control, imo. People need to stop referring to baseball as a kids game. Until I see a runner replaced by a ghost runner at third, I'll go ahead and say the game we played in the back yard is slightly different to the version we watch and post on. By slightly I mean entirely. You're obviously passionate. What is your idea to even out the baseball economy? And you can't say just lower ticket prices. Or that you don't care about owners etc. It seems you care plenty!

Pineada threw the other day!! Aren't many vets with minor league contracts given leave from their contracts if a Major league offer comes in and the player isn't likely to make the team? Big Sexy?

National debt is roughly equivalent to the yearly Gross National Product. Jham's debt is roughly equivalent to 3-4x his gross annual income. Go to law school and buy a house they said. It'll be fun they said. My mortgage lender has assured me I'm carrying a healthy level of debt given the interest rates. So I'm going to say the US debt isn't the biggest economic issue we're facing. It's all relative. Which is the point of this discussion. I still favor early arbitration. Get rid of the incentive to tank and save money. Small teams can still compete as top salaries should come down (as we're seeing already).

Correlation and causation. He throws more sliders when ahead in the count. Higher slider usage could also mean better overall command or taking advantage of the larger strike zone. I'd like to see figures regarding control or number of pitches thrown ahead vs behind in the count

Agreed. The free market has limitations. It can devolve into a race to the bottom. What's most profitable in the short term is often, perhaps rarely the most sustainable in the long run. Too many decisions which tend toward profits instead of fans and the free agency problem will solve itself because there won't be fans, free agent dollars, or competition.

I agree on the disparity aspect. That's why I argued for a revenue share. But rather than a cap which tends to hurt players, a luxury tax and revenue share mandatory spending provisions makes sense to me. Part of what made teams into b Yankee farm systems want that they couldn't compete, but rather they refused to compete. The have not teams engage in a race to the bottom. Fans lose out. Players lose out. Cheap owners pocket extra money and the Yankees who willingly spend don't subsidize the teams that don't. I get that the Yankees can afford to be more aggressive. But they certainly don't have to be. They still push the envelope. And I don't see how arb eligibility changes things for the haves and have nots. Years of control remain the same. It prevents stockpiling of young stars at a discount which is more fair to players, but you can always buy out arb years, and I think it would drive down the price of free agents on the higher side. But I'm not dead set against a cap.

This all sounds great, but voluntarily reducing revenue will ultimately destroy the game. You'll attract worse owners. Teams will not have incentive to build beautiful ballparks, provide world class entertainment, or provide safe experiences for players or fans for that matter. Ironically, the issue we're talking about is one predicted by evil empire emperor himself, George Steinbrener. When the Twins were being considered for contraction, revenue sharing was being discussed. Steinbrener was furious, and called out the Twins ownership specifically. His issue wasn't even that he'd have to pay money to his competitors so they could sign away his players through luxury tax and revenue sharing. Even he could see that a level playing field would be beneficial to the game. His anger arose from the fact that he would have to pay money to owners who would NOT be required to invest back into their team and improve the balance in the league. In short, the Polads were pocketing the revenue sharing money. Same as they pocket the added profits they promised they'd reinvest from increased team and stadium revenue. The market between player and owner will balance itself out. The problem is that the market at the ownership level is incredibly slow to react because there is almost no competition. No one is that rich. Public ownership is an idea. Potentially, a team could operate at break even or even at a deficit as long as shareholders allowed. This would force other ownership to have to spend in order to compete. The problem is, that human nature takes over. The desire to make a profit will still be there. Let's say you bought a $5,000 share, and at the end of the season, you could have a $6,000 share plus a $250 dividend, or have your share go down in value (you paid for the team based on profitability, and through payroll, you've made it less profitable) and sign more players/pay your farm system better, etc. Suddenly, you're no better than the Polads. The other option to achieve your goal of lower fan prices is to expand. You'll spread demand by increasing supply. But that's just another word for watered down. We see that even with implementation of a salary cap. You have no super teams in the NFL. Some might say the Patriots disprove that theory. I disagree. I think the Patriots have taken advantage of the watered down league. Ditto the Cavs and Warriors in the NBA. If players take pay cuts to play for one team, no one can break the bank to compete with them. It's not allowed. We could have 60 MLB teams, and we'd have a lot lower ticket and beer prices. Player salaries would come down. Billionaires would dilute their profits. It may be easier for teams to compete. You'd probably only need 2 really good pitchers and a hand full of average roll players. However, how much of a decline in overall product will people be willing to accept before leaving the sport? If allowed the market would adjust, but not for maximum entertainment value, but rather maximum profitability. But since the league can't feasibly grow and shrink with every market change, we may have to just stomach some market inefficiency. In this case, lack of reinvestment by ownership and wage disparity between players (brought about by the artificially low supply of teams and major league roster spots). I'd support some form of revenue sharing and luxury tax over a hard cap, but teams would be required to meet a spending threshold in order to obtain funds. I would also make players arbitration eligible immediately. Why fight paying players what they're worth? It's the 6 years of team control that is valuable. This should combat wage disparity. Tanking would be less advantageous. FA contracts would be balanced by lower payroll pools and a larger FA pool (teams offering FA rather than going to arb) but also by the fact that FA would be relatively more valuable because of larger buyer pools and internal options having less payroll advantage. You'd get truer values for both FA and for younger players. Finally, I'd give teams and players the option of buying out arb years while players are in the farm system. IE, young players often need more money when they're getting started. Then have more money than they need once established. If you want 3 years of league min. salary, with no arb options (current system) you have to buy those years out before the players debuts.

Jealous much? I'm guessing you want to be paid what you're worth.

That's not exactly true. The Indians actually fell to the Yankees who got lucky in the alcs and lucked out again in the world series.

You don't need to bow out. You raise good questions. In general, I think finding the gaps and holes in the analytics is one of the most interesting parts of analytics. It's why stats keep getting added and improved upon. It's why analytics staff are numbering along with scouting staffs now. But another interesting part of analytics, testing, and the scientific method in general, is finding out our perceptions or assumptions are wrong. Then trying to figure out why!

That's the problem. You don't know it's flawed. You assume it. You have laid out rationale as to why you would expect older players to decline more rapidly. There is rationale that would suggest that that the decline might be less dramatic than average. For instance, players that last that long were probably better players to begin with. Weed out the players barely surviving and flashing in the pan, and you'd expect less variation. Those are both merely hypothesis. Both could be right canceling out. Both could also be wrong! Something else entirely might be driving the rate of decline. But age and prior productivity are only 2 variables. Projections look at far more. You can run regression analysis to see what percentage of variation can be explained by any one variable. Any variable with no predictive value will not be used. You may not like the .5 WAR per season average, but like it or not, the math still backs it up at age 33 or it wouldn't be used.

I've never ever seen the Twins dump savings, or even profits for that matter, from one season into the next. They follow their revenue formula each year separately. Regarding WAR, it's a widely debated cumulative stat that probably shouldn't be taken literally. It's still a decent measuring stick for comparing players across varying circumstances without crunching zillions of numbers yourself. I also understand what you're saying about using average war decline as a predictor, or using any average as a predictor in a single circumstance for that matter. What you're calling risk, is actually variation. You hypothesize, perhaps correctly, that older players will have greater variation from the average than younger players, especially at the low end of the curve. And that the prediction for older players should be weighted for age. But WAR is a counting stat relying on health. The risk of going to zero may be elevated for older players, but it would also be higher for players with lower WAR to begin with since many of those players would have low WAR because of injuries. Essentially you have competing theories of what holds more predictive power: age or prior effectiveness. You can run normalcy curves for both and have a ton of data. Then compare standard deviations. And that's what the projections have already presumably done. If age rendered the decline average meaningless, that would almost certainly not factor into projections. I agree it would be interesting to look at the variance and median numbers. But to the extent that you said you have a hard time explaining, at least consider that you may also have a hard time understanding. That's not a knock. You have a good theory that makes sense. It's just that there are other theories that also make sense pointing in the other direction. And those have actually been tested.

A lot of people don't want to be in Minnesota, then they move here and love it. I get that it is clear that Darvish wants to stay in LA, but that in itself would not keep me from trying to get him. That said, Garcia fits this team and it's history.

Margin of error. Buxton could go down for a month. Santana for 4 starts and we cam still finish first or second in the division. Rougher to do so in the east.

Darvish is also known for a dizzying array of pitches. I can't imagine getting a feel back for all of them is easy after Tommy John. I'm not sure if he's kept them all or if pitch fx can distinguish them all. But his use of command and deception should help him remain effective as top end velocity and spin start to decline. With the bigger point once again being we have a chance at 2 or 3 years of a top starter for a reasonable price financed out over 5 years. I'm guessing if he's healthy, he'll be tradeable even in decline if we eat some celery.. er salary. A better opportunity at this type of talent won't come around often. Its also less clear, to me, that the end of a 5 year deal will be a total overpay. Not usually the case for stars getting their last big deal.

Why even follow the team? Click on for the playoffs. There are 162 regular season games. It's a lot more fun when they win. I'm frustrated with playoff losses. But I've always said that summer itself is a lot more fun when the Twins are relevant.

I'd be ok with Bautista. Only because I'm a fan. No other corresponding logic. As a part time player, he may be able to bounce back. And he's a fiery leader. So a little corresponding logic I guess.

"L O L A: Darvish"? Actually, that does sound a lot like "Hello, LA..." Sadface.

1) But if we need 2, signing 1 brings us closer. It also seems unlikely we'd be able to trade for 2 impact arms at the deadline. I'm also not sure we need multiple arms. We made the playoffs with basically the same rotation. We need quality at this point. 2) We all want the Twins to win in the playoffs. Waiting until the deadline limits our options and ability to improve our chances. 3) Are we really lacking a foundation? I'm agreeing with you on everything except on when to start accumulating talent. I believe teams should always be trying to accumulate more talent. He who hesitates is lost. My biggest criticism of Ryan wasn't the moves he made. It was his getting himself in position where he had to make panic signings because he low-balled, burned bridges with agents, built a miserly reputation, and was too tentative early in signing periods. Opportunities lost don't always re-emerge.

Then why not trade now? Why give up half a season? Why not trade last deadline? We talked and talked about trading for a piece that would help for years. We ended up with a 1 week rental that we traded to the team that knocked us out. And we paid the bill ($4.5 mil) in exchange for a kid they were not going to protect. Coulda shoulda woulda. Never a perfect time or deal. I said last year. Either support the core or blow it up. We've wasted 1.5 pennant chases and suffered through a 100 loss season. Sano, Kepler, Stewart, Burdi, Alex Meyer and Gordon have all lost significant trade value. We've wasted at least 2.5 years by sitting on the side line. I really don't want to waste even another half season at this point.