Mike Sixel

I got permission to copy paste this form Craig Calcaterra's newsletter today....it talks about the Giants and Mariners and sustainable teams, and applies to the Twins. Which is why I don't think they'll ever win with this ownership group, IMO, they won't get permission to go for it at the deadline (or even the offseason). Screw “sustainable” Yesterday Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer spoke to the press about the just-concluded season and the winter ahead. In the course of his comments he said something you hear from most baseball executives these days: ". . . The goal is to build something that's sustainable." "Sustainable" in this context is almost always a euphemism for "we want to turn a nice profit with a roster that is not too expensive, but we don’t want to be so bad that we catch a lot of hell for it.” The word, often paired with the concept of “financial flexibility,” is almost always deployed as a means of dodging a direct question about payroll and its use strongly implies that the team doesn’t want to shoot for 100 wins or anything approaching dominance, because doing such a thing would be inefficient. Sometimes it’s not just implied. Here was Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto, infamously stating that goal in explicit terms a little under a year ago: "If you go back and you look in a decade, those teams that win 54% of the time always wind up in the postseason. And they, more often than not, wind up in the World Series. So there's your bigger picture process. Nobody wants to hear the goal this year is, 'We're going to win 54% of the time.' Because sometimes 54% is -- one year, you're going to win 60%, another year you're going to win 50%. It's whatever it is. But over time, that type of mindset gets you there ... If what you're doing is focusing year-to-year on, 'what do we have to do to win the World Series this year?' You might be one of the teams that's laying in the mud and can't get up for another decade." He added, "We're actually doing the fanbase a favor in asking for their patience to win the World Series while we continue to build a sustainably good roster." First off: do you think any fan actually thinks they’re being “done a favor” by being told by the team’s GM that he does not plan to go all-out in an effort to win? I sure as hell don’t. The Mariners have existed for pushing 50 years now and are the only team in baseball which has never been to the World Series. I feel like they’ve exercised plenty of patience by now, don’t you? While most other executives are not stupid enough to explicitly say “we’re shooting for 87 wins and asking for more is unreasonable,” most of them basically behave that way. They do so by deploying that word Dipoto deployed last year and Hoyer did yesterday: “sustainable.” The idea of sustainability, when a GM says it, is an exercise in expectation-reduction. It’s a means of conditioning fans not to expect anything more than just Wild Card contention. If they make it, great, we fulfilled expectations! If they fall short, hey, at least they continued to be financially prudent. These efforts at fan conditioning have been greatly aided by 20+ years of “Moneyball’s” influence which has convinced a great many in and around the game to equate wanting to aggressively improve a baseball team with stupidity or recklessness. This idea was perfectly captured by Craig Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus nine years ago: Whatever the current breed of baseball executive, their media surrogates, and a small core of sabermetrically or ownership-oriented fans want to believe, most fans just want to watch a winner. It doesn't even have to be every year. They just want the GM and everyone who works for him to ****ing try harder, to stop hiding behind quant-speak, and to make protecting the billionaire owner’s checkbook less of a priority. This is especially true for the Chicago Cubs who almost literally print money. Most of us have to approach life in a sustainable manner because if we don’t we’re gonna go broke and be in deep ****. No professional sports team is in that boat and even if some claim otherwise, the Chicago Cubs sure as hell aren’t. So spare me, Jed Hoyer, about your and your ownership group's desire to turn a consistent, predictable profit. That’s not why anyone roots for the Cubs.

I'd consider making the lesser team win 2 games, and the better team only 1, but that still doesn't solve your problem .....

100% in agreement with this post.

Ya, I'm beginning to agree with this point......

Could be 3/4 teams in the AL playoffs from this division....so I guess it wasn't so lame after all....

There's a thread in teh minor league area, also, Fangraphs sort of helps here, but you need to look person by person, I think.

Not many this year.....I think there will be PLENTY of room on the 40 man this year.

If you made me guess..... The owners would give everyone a B, since they were competitive and likely made millions in profits. This is a group that cares about sustainable success, not winning it all, as the primary goal. Not my preference, but that's my guess in terms of what they want. I'd give the lot of them d and f grades from a fan's perspective

Can you name any player under this FO that has forced a player off the MLB roster without an injury? I can't, not during the year I expect that nearly all the top five see time with the Twins, other than Jenkins. Plus Emmanuel, who might, though I doubt it, start the year with the big league team.

Truth. Is he related to DSP?

Great writing! Truly.

I agree, but NO CHNANCE i try to make him a starter. Why ruin a good thing (I know why he wants it)?

Does he have any coaching experience?

In "defense" of KOC near the goal line, the Lions ran one of KOC's trick plays down there and scored last night...... I'd love a better blocking OL, but I don't know how many great OL there even are any more....

Need a new 3B coach! I have no idea how much all this matters, but I think it does on the margins.

The only way that doesn't happen is if they deal Lopez to Boston for Teel and unload one of the two Twins.....IMO.

Don't you usually say that a team can't win with 40% of its payroll on 3 players? Or am I misremembering?

Dude had sex with a 14 or 15 year old....(he claims he thought she was 16, like that's ok).

I'm rooting for the Tigers and Orioles and Mets.

Assuming positive intent, maybe there was a simple error?

I thought I was talking about the "overall" grade in that post? If not, ooops.

CC put up the 26th most fWAR among all hitters in MLB this year, and gets a B.......11th highest wrc+ in all of baseball, and gets a B.....

Yikes. I am shocked at how bad he was, truly.

Your dislike for Jeffers is consistent at least. He's a legit starting catcher, and other teams would have him start 100 games there, IMO.

He'd have to extend his deal to spread the money out. MLB rules don't allow an overall reduction, iirc