tobi0040

Completely agree. You only move Plouffe when you know Sano sticks at 3B. Plouffe by virtue of him being a 3B would hold more value in a trade than our LF.

Right, somewhere between 7 and 10 at 3B. Definite value there. But assuming he has 2-4 years left of prime production (which is assuming he is the guy last year through ages 31-33)......does that make sense to give up for potentially 15-20 years of Sano at that prime position? I think you move Sano to the OF now he never goes back to 3B.

Relatively speaking, i dont think fans would care nearly as much as PED users.

I think option one is keeping Sano at 3B. He is a franchise caliber player so he needs to stick at a premium position if he can. He has the potential to be much better than Plouffe and Trevor would have some trade value at 3B. Trevor will be 29 next season and he has a career .723 OPS. In his best year, he had a .750 OPS which made him somewhere between the 7-10th best 3B. Middle of the road as far as a corner OF. We just can't knock Sano, who could play the game the next 20 years off of 3B for what will amount to a few prime years of Plouffe. And I say that liking Plouffe more than most.

I am very excited about Sano and really hope he can stick at 3B. Here are my best case/worst case for his career. This assumes he stays healthy throughout his career which is never a given. Best case - Mike Schmidt (granted a much weaker fielding one) - This means he sticks at 3B. Hits .265-.270. Averages about 35 HR a year. .380 OBP and an OPS around .900. Averages 80-90 BB a year. I think his K numbers will be more the first half of Mike’s career, 23-27%, versus the last half where he brought his career average down to 19%. Averages an o WAR of 5 per season. Worst case – Adam Dunn. He plays OF or DH. Dunn’s career average was .237 but was more in the .250 range until the last few years. .364 OBP, .854 OPS. Averages 33 HR a year. 80-90 BB a year. K’s 28% of the time. Averages about 2.8 o WAR per year.

It is a close call. But if the Twins have prospects 2 and 15 or so, both at premium positions it close to washes out Bryant and Russell. Then you add in the pitchers and I think that gives the Twins an edge..but you can make a case either way and certainly I am in the minority here and I understand that.

Arrietta accumulated 65% of his career WAR last year in what amounted to 27% of his innings. His career ERA is 4.48. He is a question mark moving forward. For reference, Phil Hughes put up only 35% of his WAR last year in 21% of his career innings.

To be fair, the comments on this thread in response to the fact that they lack SP prospects was that they were just going to go out and sign them.

I think they need two more really good pitchers, in addition to Lester. And they have a window where Lester could very well decline. I don't think Arrietta is for real.

Even if they can afford a Lester every off-season, are they going to be able to land one each year and is the 6-7 year, $150-200M contract to 29-31 year old starters a smart, sustainable approach? Especially if you need 1-3 of them?

You may not appreciate this, but I don't think fans would care nearly as much about the managers regardless. I really don't. With players you know the game is rigged. The guys playing straight up are fighting an uphill battle. You know some of the stats are rigged. Some of the championships are rigged. You have to speculate who is legit and who is real. I don't think any of those concerns happen if you know a manager out there is betting on his team to win games. And it is just not fair to the guys that get cut from the teams. Miss the all star game, the MVP awards. Cy Youngs. An example would be Clemens. Took a Cy away from a guy named Teddy Higuera in 1986. Was that guy hosed? We will never know. An MVP from Don Mattingly that year. Two Cy Youngs from Randy Johnson (97 and 2004). One from Pedro in 98. One from Mark Mulder. One from Jimmy Key. And one from MN's own Scotty Erickson in 91. In addition the contract kickers, these awards would probably be the biggest professional achievement to a guy like Erickson, Higuera or Mulder.

I guess I view everything in the context of the opportunity cost. I would argue we have six high end players. 3 SP's (Meyer, Berrios, and Kohl), a CF, 3B/OF, and SS. If you could pick six positions you could have really talented cheap players at that might be the ideal positions. The Cubs have about five high end guys. The top four are position players. Bryant is a 3B/1B. Addison Russell SS. Then I believe two corner OF's (I don't think Shwarber will catch). Then their 5th guy is a pitcher. So if we have to go out into the free agent market and pluck some corner OF, 1B, etc. to complete our team and they have to go out and buy starting pitchers, CF, 3B, etc. I think we would be in a better position. The fact that they are in a better position to do that should not influence the rankings at all.

I am with you on the disclosure side of the CEO buying stock. That is a fair point. I would push back on this notion that gambling is the worst offense. I would still argue that PED's hurt the integrity of the game at least as much. The managers decisions come into question, okay. Don't records come into question with PED's? Poor Roger Maris. Prior to 1996, 12 players hit more than 50 HR in a season. Between 1976 and 1996, only two players did. From 1996 to 2010, 14 players did it 22 times. Brady Anderson has 50 and Williams, Aaron the HR king, and Schmidt never did. For a sport that loves their stats....this should be a bigger issue. Not to mention the broader point, who did Pete Rose hurt? I would argue the cheaters did in fact hurt players, owners, and fans. I would also think the average fan would be more upset if you said....10% of the players are using PED's and you don't know who is versus, the manager of this team is betting on his team to win.

I would vote for Rose as a player if I could. The "separate debate" was what I was trying to get it. Relatively speaking, baseball has picked and chosen some odd things to come down on and others to look the other way or slap on the wrist. Players that have acknowledged PED use will eventually get into the hall of fame. A few are still drawing a paycheck like Mcgwire.

I have heard that logic and I think it is pretty circumstancial, this could lead to that, or it may be implied that....It also assumes he needs money on a game to be motivated. I don't neccesarily agree with that part either. In the case of PED's, people were actually hurt by it. If 15% of the league was using, that is 112 players. Let alone those in the minors juicing to try and get there. Those are a lot of jobs set aside for cheaters. Some guys would have never made it, others hung on for years longer because they cheated. This was a zero sum game.

I wasn't, actually questioning it because I don't think pitchers meet the perceptions of a much higher bust rates. And I also think it all else being equal, teams treasure good, young, controllable pitchers because of the opportunity cost. So this notion that they can flip position players for pitchers later even steven I think is off base. The other thing, I think the Twins and Cubs are a coin flip. I would personally rather have our system becuase of the high end pitchers and even our position players are at premium positions (top three are CF, 3B, and SS). I am just taken back that the rankings are unanimous and the Cubs aren't being penalized at all for these things.

He was just that good! Okay, no idea he played that well. Just that he was suspended for throwing the WS. I forgive him! http://www.shoelessjoejackson.com/about/biography.html

I don’t see how a guy throwing a game (Joe Jackson) is on the same page as a guy betting on his own team (Rose). You lost me there. I would just say that people that used PED’s took jobs and an enormous amount of money from players that paid the game straight up. Guys didn’t make teams took jobs making $30K a year instead of 500K or a few million. Others involved jourey guys juicing in a contract year and stealing money from owners, which could have been devoted to other players. From the perspective of the obvious, skewed stats, world series winners, MVP awards, the actual amount of people hurt is way, way more by using PED’s in my opinion. Same things from an integrity perspective. Just my opinion. The last point I will make is that Rose was addicted to gambling. He has acknowledged this as well. Had he been addicted to hard drugs like Strawberry or Doc Gooden, MLB would have paid for his rehab and I think he would be in the hall of fame. Certainly, playing the game high on coke has an integrity/negative headline issue as well. I am not sure why gambling is worse and why those guys, had they had long enough careers would be okay for the hall of fame but Pete Rose not. The issue for me is not that gambling is illegal, but why it is viewed as the holy grail versus PED's, hard drugs, etc. I find the others worse and have a hard time seeing why betting on your team is worse than PED's, etc.

That is the funny thing about the draft grades the day after. You can usually go back and laugh at those. Or the Kershaw scouting report from the team that drafted him. Projected him as a #2 starter as a ceiling and his breaking balls needed a ton of work.

I looked at the 2002 to 2011 drafts (10 years). Categorized the players into heard of them (played in the league a bit as a qualifier) and stud. Please note this was done very quickly, I didn't look up WAR for 100 players. So I don't want to open the door to nit picking. Just wanted to look generally at the notion that pitchers have much higher bust rates RE: Theo's strategy. Here are the pitchers: Pitchers 2002 bullington gruler loewen everts greinke francis 2003 sleeth stauffer maholm danks 2004 verlander humber neimen rogers sowers bailey townsend diamond 2005 romero townsend pelfrey 2006 hochevar reynolds lincoln morrow miller kershaw lincecum 2007 Price Moskos detwiler Weathers Parker bumbarter 2008 matusz crow 2009 stras hobgood wheeler minor leake turner storen 2010 taillon pomeranz loux harvey whitsen 2011 cole holtzen bauer bundy bradley I tally 53 picks. 33 guys you have heard of, in the league a bit. 62.26%. 11 of those are studs (20.75%). The studs are Greinke, Verlander, Bailey, Kershaw, Lincecum, Price, Bumgarter, Stras, Wheeler, Harvey, and Cole. Position players 2002 upton fielder moore meyer 2003 delmon weeks lubanski harvey markakis stewart 2004 bush nelson 2005 upton gordon zimmerman bruan tulo maybin 2006 longoria stubbs rowell 2007 mouttakis vitters wieters laporta 2008 beckam alvarez hosmer posey skipworth alonso beckam castro 2009 ackley tate sanchez 2010 harper machado colon deshields choice 2011 starling renden lindor baez soabgeberg I tally, 46 picks. Somewhere I missed a pick. I get 26 guys you have heard of, been in the league (56.5%). I tally 12 studs (26.09%%). The studs are: Fielder, Markakis (borderline), Justin Upton, Zimmerman, Braun, Tulo, Longoria, Weiters, Alvarez, Posey, Harper, and Machado. Not really conclusive the point of peoples perceptions in my opinion. Certainly not, lets avoid drafting pitchers and figure it out later. The other thing I noticed, it looks like Terry enjoys going after failed top pitchers. I count five of these pitchers we have traded for, signed, or at some point had interest. Traded for Humber, signed Stauffer and Pelfrey. Had interest in Maholm and Francis at one point. Safe to say this is a strategy that has not paid off for us. Completely agree with Levi that the drafting position players and signing pitchers is a luxury that Theo has that many others don't.

I have long thought about this as well. Trevor May in the minors has had seasons like this. In 2013 he had a 4.50 ERA or so, ton of K's, lots of BB's. But he had 26 ER in 4 starts, a few of them 2-3 innings each (high BB starts too). He made 27 starts I think that year. So you are going to lose for sure, 4 of the 27 starts. But now you have a guy giving you a chance to win in the other 23. He had several games with 0, 1, or 2 ER.

Seems like Pete the gambler with money on his team and Pete the managers interests are aligned. In a similar way of the CEO that announces a large stock purchase in his own company. Now, they should haves rules against it for the reasons you mentioned. However, a player that cheats could be taking a job and money away from a player that does not cheat. In addition, a few players cheating could cause others to cheat to keep up, which I think happened in the 90's. Then you have GM's and owners wasting money on players who had inflated numbers as well. I think the degree of this wrong is worse, as you have actual people getting hurt. So to me to have a hard and fast rule about gambling and a wrist slap for PED's is weird.

Yeah. The funny thing is I distinctly remember the hobgood pick and how great it was received

Bob, Thanks for the Chicago perspective. I would say that pitchers have turned a corner after several years. But is not the norm. Guys wih that profile got plenty of bounces. His babip dipped about 3 percent and 74 percent of his runners were stranded versus A career 68 percent. At the very least it is premature to say he projects as a top of the rotation guy until a longer track record of success appears I get the strategy they are employing. Time will tell if it pans out. As noted, he has the payroll to fill a bit of the pitching gap. I also feel like the strategy could be short sided. The pressure for the cubs to win is higher. So if you look at schwarber versus kohl, most had kohl as a better prospect but do they have the patience? I think the issue is going to be this notion that they can just trade position players for pitchers. We will see I guess. Seems as though teams that have good young controllable pitchers treasure them as the opportunity cost is very high

Based on chats it seems like kiley thinks Meyer is a long term reliever for sure.