Teflon

I like your idea of opening the Bat & Barrel for road games. Hopefully it catches the Twins ears.

http://www.milb.com/assets/images/6/9/2/251273692/cuts/222x168/cut.png As per today's Chattanooga Lookouts press release, Nick Gordon will be starting the 2018 season with the AA Lookouts under new manager, Tommy Watkins. Opening Day for the Lookouts is April 5th at home against the Birmingham Barons.

If Sano can just keep hitting his weight he'll eventually be a .350 hitter.

The Twins' one-year $50 million windfall from the BAMTech sale to Disney gave them a one-year window to spend short-term on free agents. I doubt they intend to spend the same amount on payroll in 2019 or likewise pursue free agents.

Dee Gordon (@FlashGJr) has some questions on the Twins' use of bother Nick at second base this spring.

At 22, Gordon's been moved pretty quickly through the system, so the Twins would probably try to get him another half-year to a year at AA/AAA - especially if they want to have him pick up 2B experience.

Update - March 18th Nick Gordon was among six players sent to minor league camp by the Twins today. Here's the notice on that move from Seth: Twins Send Six to Minor League Camp With Jorge Polanco suspended for 80 games, an impressive start in AA or AAA for Gordon could quicken his arrival to the big leagues.

Adding a link to Nick Nelson's Twins 2018 Position Analysis: Second Base

I think the Twins like having position flexibility from their middle infielders as we've seen with Nunez and Escobar and Adrianza. If Dozier does become a free agent next year, better to have Gordon prepared as a potential option.

Spring Training Update - March 14th Nick, a non-roster invite to spring training, has played in 10 of the Twins' 17 Grapefruit League games. He's been used mostly at second base, playing 32 innings there - more than any other Twin except Brian Dozier. Gordon has collected 8 hits in 17 spring at-bats, including a double and triple. You can see Nick make a nice spring training play at second base against the Yankees here.

Adding a link to Nick Nelson's Twins 2018 Position Analysis: Shortstop

Kudos to the Twins for spending HALF of the additional $50 million they received in the sale of BamTech.

http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Nick+Gordon+Minnesota+Twins+Photo+Day+QcMmnV0Z1iDl.jpg Nick Gordon is a 22-year old lefty-hitting shortstop drafted fifth overall in the first round of the 2014 June amateur draft out of Olympia High School in Orlando, Florida. As a senior, Nick batted .494 with a .567 on-base average and was named the Gatorade Florida Baseball Player of the Year for a second straight year. Regarded as the best shortstop available in the 2014 draft, Nick chose to sign with the Twins for the slotted $3.8 million dollars instead of playing collegiately for Florida State. Nick’s baseball bloodlines are well-known. His father, Tom, made his big league debut in 1988 as the second youngest player in the major leagues and pitched for 21 seasons, exiting as the game's oldest player in 2009. Along the way he made three All-Star teams. Nick’s older brother, Dee, currently with the Seattle Mariners, won the 2015 National League batting title and is a two-time All-Star. Nick debuted in professional baseball at the age of 18 in 2014 for the Twins’ Rookie League team in Elizabethton where he hit .294/.333/.366 in 57 games – 49 played at shortstop. Baseball America named him the #2 prospect in the Appalachian League that season and also ranked him #61 on their top 100 list. The Twins assigned Nick to Low A Cedar Rapids in 2015 and he batted .277/.336/.360, scoring 79 runs and stealing 25 bases in 120 games. Cedar Rapids played for the Midwest League championship that year, losing to West Michigan. Baseball America again pegged him as a top prospect in his league ( #4, Midwest League) and once again included him in the their top 100 list of prospects. (#53) Moving up to High A Fort Myers in 2016, Nick hit .291/.335/.386 in 116 games and earned a third-straight top ten prospect ranking in his league from Baseball America. (#4) At the end of the season, the Twins sent him to play in the Arizona Fall League where Nick was a pleasant surprise in Surprise with a .418 OBP and .862 OPS for the Saguaros in competition against other up-and-coming players. Baseball Prospectus, MLB, and Baseball America all included Nick in their top 100 lists going into 2017. Keeping to their progression schedule, the Twins promoted Nick at age 21 to the Chattanooga Lookouts in the AA Southern League. Gordon showed some increased pop in 2017, hitting 9 home runs to go with 29 doubles and 9 triples in 578 plate appearances. He slugged over .400 for the first time in a full season and logged his highest on-base percentage at .341. In July, Nick played in the MLB Futures Game in Miami. The Lookouts finished with the best record in the Southern League at 91-49 and shared the league title with Pensacola. (The championship series was cancelled due to Hurricane Irma.) As in each previous year, Nick was placed among the top ten prospects in his league by Baseball America and named to their top 100 list. 2018 will be a defining year for Nick. The Twins are decidedly deep in young talent at shortstop with Royce Lewis, Wander Javier and Jermaine Palacios. Gordon was invited to Spring Training with the MLB club as a non-roster player and is being given looks at both shortstop and second base. With 2B Brian Dozier's contract expiring at the end of the year, the Twins are undoubtedly considering their options for 2019. Away from baseball, Nick is a budding rapper – going by the handle “G Cinco.” He just released his first EP, I Do It All, backed by three videos. Im the Man Big Checks I Do It All You can follow Nick on Twitter at @FlashGThe3rd and check out his music page at http://gcincomusic.com

Two major problems - the loss of a draft pick for teams that sign players who rejected qualifying offers and the bump in supplemental draft position given to teams who qualify for the luxury tax benefits when one one of their players who received a qualifying offer is signed. It reinforces both not signing free agents and teams being rewarded for qualifying for the luxury tax benefit. Also, as players are grossly underpaid at the beginning of their careers, if teams are now going to collectively stop over-paying at the end, there is no longer equitable pay in total to players over their careers. If I was a player, I'd be adamant that the CBA strip the compensation for the qualifying offers and reduce the number of years of team control/arbitration over players. As a fan I also think it's the right solution. The next CBA negotiation IS going to be ugly. The owners actions this year seem bound to provoke a strike which, considering what complicit complacent patsies the Players Union was in negotiating the last CBA, would have seemed far-fetched not too long ago.

Nick Gordon, please.

Or Aybar could be a minor league filler after another one of the Twins shortstop prospects gets dealt.

Assuming middle-of-the-road NL starters (Correia, Worley, Marquis, Pelfrey, Nolasco) would fare similarly in the AL was one of the big failings of the previous Twins brain trust. Not sure they fully realized the difference in what these guys' performance would look like if you took away two feeble pitcher at-bats per game and substituted two competent DH at-bats. The new Twins brain trust probably has a better model for projecting this so a pitcher like Lynn would be downgraded accordingly.

Odorizzi pitched fewer than 5 innings in 10 of his 28 starts in 2017. That number was 4 in 2016 in 33 starts. His walks per 9 innings also increased from 2.6 to 3.8 between those two years. If the Twins were getting the 2016 Jake Ordorizzi I would be happy for this deal. He didn't look like the same pitcher in 2017, however. This smacks of Vance Worley.

What is a reasonable number of contract years to offer a free agent pitcher and what is the liklihood that any pitcher stays healthy for the length of that contract? Ballclubs, just like actuaries at insurance companies, must have detailed data assessing the risks based on a pitchers' age, innings pitched and previous injury history. Unfortunately, to take a shot at defining this risk for myself, I'll have to make do with the less-than-detailed data I have available to me, at least until such time that the St. Louis Cardinals provide me with the passwords to the other MLB teams' databases, I looked at all instances of starting pitchers, ages 25-33, making at least 30 starts in a season since 1998 (when the league expanded to its current number of teams) and then looked at the next 8 seasons for each of those pitchers to see how many time they failed to make 15 starts. To minimize the possibilities that they were merely ineffective and replaced, I also limited the group of pitchers to only those with sub 4.00 ERAs in those 30-start seasons. This left 475 pitchers' seasons to use as a basis. The chart below shows the liklihood of those pitchers not making 15 starts in any subsequent season over the next 8 seasons. By the third season, for example, for a 29-year-old pitcher there is a 30% liklihood of having had a season of fewer than 15 starts. By the 5th season, it is around 45%.The biggest jumps in these probabilities actually occur between years 1 & 2 and years 2 & 3. By the time the pitcher has reached the 4-year mark, the increased risks grow more gradually - such that the liklihood of missing a season in a 5 year deal doesn't appear too much riskier than in a 6 or 7 year deal. It certainly would be enlightening (especially to agents) to see what big league clubs project the actual risk of a Darvish deal is over the long term.

The trouble with front offices now getting "sensible" about the returns on free agent contracts is it takes money out of the overpaid end of the system that won't go back into the underpaid end of the system. If this is going to continue, players need to reach free agency quicker so their peak seasons earn them more equitable pay.

This is exactly how the Russians would rig baseball if they couldn't do it through Facebook.