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tobi0040

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Everything posted by tobi0040

  1. tobi0040
    So you handpicked Abreu, Soler, Kazmir, and Chen. Clearly Abreu, Soler, and Chen were drastically under-estimated by every team in MLB. I would argue, even the team that submitted the winning bid under-estimated how good these guys were going to be. These are high bidder wins scenario, I assure you if the White Sox knew they had a guy with a .950 OPS they would have offered him more money than 6-70. If the Cubs knew they had one of the top 3-5 prospects in baseball and could get him on a 9 year deal, they would have probably bid more than $30M total. In addition, you are not signing Willngham, Pelfrey, or Nolasco. How is this not near flawless hindsight?
  2. tobi0040
    This is really my point. With the benefit of hindisight we could have not signed Pelfrey and Nolasco and then handpicked four of the best FA bargains out there. By my count, payroll would have been $97M last year without Ricky and Pelfrey and add Abreu (11M), Chen (4M) Soler (3M) , and Kazmir (11M) WAR: Soler - 0 ( was in AAA) Abreu - 5.5 Kazmir - 1.7 Chen - 1.8 We are a $98M team that won 79 games with the benefit of flawless signings and no signings. I think that goes to show how far we were away. Kazmir and Chen would have a year left.
  3. tobi0040
    It is about timing. The Twins model of a sustainable run is young players contributing and a few veterans. By the time our prospects are adding value, Gio has one year left and is demanding $120M. no thanks.
  4. tobi0040
    The other comical part is the following players will have played 1-3 seasons by 2016 and literally none of us has any clue if they will be all stars or complete busts. Let's wait until we see these guys before we add the years to 2016 and call it a failure. Buxton, Sano, Vargas, Meyer, May, Berrios, Gibson, Hicks, Rosario, Burdi, and Polanco. Let's wait to see what we have here, in our 5 position players, 60% of the starting staff, and a closer
  5. tobi0040
    According to Fangraphs, the highest WAR at 3B and LF were Rendon and Brantley. Both had a WAR of 6.6. Rendon's OPS was .824 and Brantley's was .891. So getting Sano up as quickly as possible in LF is not exactly equal to waiting an extra two months and getting him in at 3B.
  6. tobi0040
    I think if we deal all of our big cards and decidedly lose the hand without any promise....it has been a failure. But Meyer, May, Buxton, Sano, and Berrios need to fail before we know. I asked you a very specific question and you failed to address it earlier (Terry Ryan still employed thread at 9:43 AM yesterday). Please go back to my post about what specifically you would have done in 2012 differently than Terry Ryan that would have yielded contending team in 2014. Given his prospects, a desire from ownership to cut payroll while they rebuild, etc. It has been a painful four years. But I think given where we were, no quicker path to contention existed. I would love to be proven wrong here. Could we have spent a little money in the short term and with the benefit of hindsight, signed every vet on a one year deal that turned out to work? Yes, that would have been extremely lucky, won more games, but not been a long term solution nor anything more than an expensive, aging .500 team blocking prospects.
  7. tobi0040
    Here is my two cents regarding this. I think these are all truths. 1) I think in most these long term deals, the team knows on day 1 it is not going to look pretty towards the end. 2) The Twins would have been skewered for letting Mauer leave and Mauer's agent knew it. So he took to the cleaners. 3) I think the Twins view mauer's salary as part marketing expense. What portion I am not sure. But he brings a ton of kids and women that probably would not otherwise follow the team. My cousin was 10 years old and their family had a 20 game pack because she wanted to watch Chipper Jones at the tail end of his career. She didnt really care that his OPS was in the low .800's instead of the 1.000 range it was for years. Same could be said about Todd Helton, Derek Jeter, etc.
  8. tobi0040
    If Plouffe does not fetch a good starting pitcher, I would rather keep him and at minimum platoon him. Between 3B, OF, and Mauer's injuries at 1B he will get reps.
  9. tobi0040
    You could make the case that we should take a large step forward this next year, or at the very minimum start to really show promise. Gibson is in year 3. May, Santana, and Vargas are in year 2. And our top four prospects (at least 4 of our top 5) could all crack the big league roster (Sano, Buxton, Meyer, and Berrios). If we play all our best cards and don't show promise of a contending team in 2 years, then I agree we are at the beginning.
  10. tobi0040
    ESPN has Plouffe this year as 70th overall in offensive WAR. http://espn.go.com/mlb/war/leaders/_/year/2014/type/offensive/alltime/false/count/51 Fangraphs has him 9th among 3B in total WAR. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=3b&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2014&month=0&season1=2014&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0 I am in no rush to trade the guy unless we get really good pitching in return and Sano sticks at 3B. Those are if's.
  11. tobi0040
    I guess I don't understand why Plouffe would be a bad OF. He played SS until 2011. The position requiring the most athleticism and quickness. He played 15 games in the OF the following year. We are acting like he is going to be another Willingham or Arcia in LF.....can anyone imagine those guys playing short stop? We would not put those guys at SS in a co-ed charity game.
  12. tobi0040
    This is the danger of making huge splashes on the free agent market. Ellsbury is a CF/LF who had an OPS of .747 this year. He has been hurt a tad in his career and he is owed $22M a year through his age 37. I really don't fault the Twins here. Tanaka was an unknown commodity. Scouts were pretty unanomous that he was not anywhere near Darvish and the Yankees handed him $150M. It worked out for 3 months and now he has a partiallly torn UCL. Cruz is at 8M but he is going to get paid this offseason. I think the Twins need to be smarter. We could probably platoon CF or LF and get .750-800 OPS type production between Arcia, Plouffe, Sano, Hicks, et. all. Arcia and Plouffe alone get you to the .800 range. I looked the other day, Hicks had a .750 OPS last year against lefties, Arcia has a career .848 OPS against righties.
  13. tobi0040
    My buddy listened to the call and said the question was "if Plouffe takes another step forward at 3B and nobody has played well enough to claim LF, would you be open to Sano moving to LF"? So that scenario is a little more specific than Sano to LF... But at the end of the day Plouffe is a keeper in my view, whether that means he stays at 3B or LF (3.5 WAR last year, second to Dozier). It may just come down to which ever of those two plays a better LF.
  14. tobi0040
    I don't think this year is the time. Gio has 2 years and one team option, then a vesting option. So maybe only 3 years left. We are probably not competing the first year, maybe two of those three years and Polanco is still young. If we were one player away and we had more clarity about Polanco maybe.
  15. tobi0040
    I think you are drastically overstating the value of duffey and eades
  16. tobi0040
    I would not flip Dozier or Plouffe at the moment. I think Dozier is a core guy on a good team and we need clarity about Sano's position. I pretty much agree with everything else. Although letting all the pen guys go depends on our trust in the pen prospects.
  17. tobi0040
    I think the Dodgers would be willing to dump his salary if it meant they could then sign Max Scherzer. I actually was getting on board with the Kemp thing (supporting it, not thinking it would happen). But as I typed that first sentence I asked myself who I would rather have, Kemp or Scherzer. We need the pitcher. Kemp has 5/100 left. Max will cost a bit more but if we are rolling the dice......give me the stud pitcher.
  18. tobi0040
    Na ah, the Cards try and draft good players. The Twins don't. On a serious note. Next year we may have three first round picks in our rotation (Hughes, Gibson, and Meyer). Really good deals Nolasco and May in the 4th rounds. Buxton in the first round, Rosario in the 4th. Hicks in the first round. Sano a top international guy. Wow, we emulated the Cardinals. We had a mix of guys from all over.
  19. tobi0040
    I think Terry and the owners had an agreement when he signed on that it was going to take a long time to rebuild the team, given the shape it was in. I think "not playing the FA game" was part of the deal for the first 2-3 years. Both sides were on the same page. Because of that I have not heard Terry complain about the situation or his resources. The fact remains that no path existed from 2012 to a contending team in 2014. Even with the benefit of hindsight you can't put one together (with the prospects we had and a 110M payroll). I am of the belief that you can only criticize someone if you can offer up a better solution. Saying Terry failed without putting together a path is not productive at best.
  20. tobi0040
    The Twins have the ability to be 12-16 in payroll every year. We were 14th in revenue this year. the Twin cities I believe is about middle of the pack as far as cities go. Revenue dipping in the next year is a result of the product on the field. I agree is should go up and down a tad...but normal should be a little lower than 15-25 http://www.forbes.com/mlb-valuations/list/#page:1_sort:5_direction:asc_search:
  21. tobi0040
    I completely agree....when those guys are up and contributing is when you go out and add guys like Cruz and Shields.
  22. tobi0040
    The BA is only telling part of the story. He had 19 HR in 60 games at AAA with an OPS around .920.
  23. tobi0040
    When you have young teams in the playoffs in the 15-20 range, they are typically getting a ton of productioni out of young, cheap players. Those guys are not going to be cheap forever. Between the Royals and O's, you have the following players under $5M: Gausman, Machado, Tillman, Chen, Duffy, Ventura, Moustakis, Aoki, Escobar, Hosmer, Holland, and Davis Reminds me of the small ball Twins in 2002 and 2003, the little payroll that could. Fast forward a few years and half of those guys are vets with huge salaries here and the other half are vest with huge salaries someplace else.
  24. tobi0040
    It is March 2012. Coming off a 65 win team. Your ownership group has given you no budget for free agent acqusitions and wants you to rebuild. You have the #2 pick in the upcoming draft. Here are your top minor leaguers, according to BA. The number one and three guys are 19. The #2 guy is wildly overrated. The number 4 guy is coming off a .720 OPS year in high A. #5 is 20. The only real prospect of a pitcher had Tommy John 3 months earlier. 1. Miguel Sano, 3b/ss 2. Joe Benson, of 3. Eddie Rosario, 2b/of 4. Aaron Hicks, of 5. Oswaldo Arcia, of 6. Levi Michael, ss/2b 7. Liam Hendriks, rhp 8. Kyle Gibson, rhp 9. Chris Parmelee, of/1b 10. Brian Dozier, ss/2b What is your plan to get this team to .500 with a realistic chance upon improving that to contention in four years? You even get the benefit of hindsight. I just don't see a path.
  25. tobi0040
    I agree here. The issue with waiting until we have a "need" is that you are comparing a rookie that will likely struggle (Sano) with a guy in his prime at close to peak value (Plouffe).
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