tobi0040

I commented on his arm, which I am amazed people forget when talking about an outfielder. He has one of the five worst arms in baseball. Hands down.

What upside would you suggest Revere has? He has basically averaged this per year (divdiding career totals by 2.2) .285 average, .324 OBP, .330 Slugging, .654 OPS, 14 doubles, 6 triples, 0 HR, 36 RBI, 33 BB, 36 SB. The SB are the only above average number. Everything else is well below average except the average, but factor in they are all singles and that isn't good. Even when he hit .330 in the minors he did not take any walks or have any power at all. So I would argue he is never sniffing an OPS of .700. I wonder if a stat exists to judge how many runners advanced on an OF arm. Becuase I would be Revere would lead the league in that one. I think Terry knew he was not an MLB player and made the move before everyone else knew it.

We got a high upside guy in May for Revere. You take that and hope for the best. Whether or not he makes it does not make that a bad trade. Ben Revere has 45 extra base hits in 1,400 MLB at bats. His OPS is .654 and his arm is a liability. I would say that trade was a coup. Now the fact that we gave Worley the opening day nod and he got so many innings speaks to how horrible our staff was. But that is a deal you do seven days of the week.

I don't buy that they are getting all the production out of these guys and they would be worse with other coaches. I don't think they should get the blame for the talent, but how many of these guys are out-performing? About as many as under-performing in my eyes. Diamond in 2012, Dozier in 2013. But Hicks and Gibson (albeit only 10 starts) come to mind on the other end of the spectrum.

Tonkin was the one mentioned. But let's not get carried away about Thorpe. I am as excited as anyone, but we are talking about one year in rookie ball.

My guess is we were the only team scouting Tonkin and that was because Kubel tipped us off. Extremely lucky.

He was manager of the year in 2010, finished in 2nd 2006, 2008, and 2009. Could very well be with Gardy though, seems like he never says boo regarding a veteran.

Here are my two cents, specifically about accountability. Front Office - I think they should be accountable for not investing a dime in 2012 and 2013. They bought two good pitchers this offseason, but it should not have taken this long, we should have been adding pieces each year. I think that pro-longed our bad seasons. I understand not spending money on a 3B or CF, but we had holes at SP, SS, and DH that were not addressed and the pipeline was bare. Three years later we don't have an answer at DH or SS. Gardy - It is hard to fault him for the losses. Joe Torre, Mike Matheny, or Tony Larussa could not have won with this bunch over the last few years. Having good young players come up does worry me a bit. I think Gardy handles them very poorly. He communicates through the media way too much, especially with regard to young players. Would we find anything better out there? Tough to say. It seems an easy fix would be to have him keep things in house. While they are talking to him, explain the thought process around the batting order, i.e. number 2 in the order. Rick Anderson - Similar with Gardy, no pitching coach could have had results with this bunch. At the same time, I don't understand why he is regarded as a great pitching coach. The minors coach taught Johan the change-up. A previous thread brought up Fien, Burton, etc. that were waiver wire guys that have pitched well here. This happens a lot with bullpen players, up and down from year to year. But we have to mention the guys that were better after they left. Kyle Lohse, Grant Balfour, Breslow, Neshek, Liriano last year. That list is at least as long. Could we do better? I don't know. I think Rick is an average pitching coach and the pitchers he coaches all like him. As long as Rick doesn't try changing guys like Meyer and in the name of pitch counts talk him into pitching to contact, I am fine with him staying. One final thought, I think coaches in baseball have less impact on results than in all the other major sports. They get way too much credit for wins and too much blame for losses. Mike Scoscia and Gardy were the best coaches in the game in 2002, now both are fighting for their jobs. Neither has changed the way they coach or interact with players.

I will take the under on a few of these from ZIPS: Vance Worley 4.93 ERA, 46 IP. For some reason I don't think he will get that many innings with the Twins this year. Phil Hughes, they basically have his career ERA in there (4.50). He has a 4.24 ERA out of the new Yankee stadium. Not a huge KC fan, but I will go under 5.11. That is 60 basis points above his career. Gibson 5.04. I will go under that. Meyer is not even on the list and I expect 80-100 IP out of him in the 3's or very low 4's. BTW, can someone explain to me how WAR can differ so drastically from ERA? My understanding is that wins and losses were determined by runs scored versus runs allowed. Detroit has an ERA of 3.72 with 18.8 WAR. Rays have a 3.70 ERA with 12.3 WAR.

I meant 900 for the top 5. Gibson and Meyer splitting the 5th spot. 180 inning average. 4.40-4.80 seems doable for those two. I think Meyer's innings will be much better than that.

I think the year over year improvements look drastic on paper. But consider we are replacing Walters, Devries, etc. with Nolasco, Hughes, and Alex Meyer and that we started from a place of a historically bad rotation. The projection for next year may not even be league average. Here are my two cents: Nolasco Jokin has 4.00, which is 30 basis points worse than last year, 37 basis points better than his career average. Pelfrey Jokin has 4.19, which is 29 basis points better than his career Hughes, Jokin has 4.33, which is actually worse than his 4.24 career ERA if you take out his innings in the new yankee stadium. KC, Jokin has his 4.25 ERA from last year. That is 24 basis points better than his career. Meyer, Jokin has him at 4.20, which I think is high given his sub 3.00 ERA in the minors with a ton of K's. These maybe 10-20 basis points optimistic on three of the guys, not optimistic enough about Hughes and Meyer. Ultimately, if the top four guys match their career averages we have a 4.40 ERA or so. If we get 900 IP out of these guys we allow 85 fewer runs. If it is 4.60 we allow 65 fewer runs. If they average out to a 4.80 ERA, which is a collective 40 points higher than their career averages, we allow 45 fewer runs. The context of the conversation should move from will the rotation be better to how much the rotation will be better.

In reality I think it will be closer to 80-90 runs. Unfortunately, I have to question the strategy as well. I am excited about Pinto, Hicks, Meyer, etc. But you can rattle off 10 names of guys that aren't part of the 2015 team. This is year 3-4 of a rebuilding team, so you wonder why more of an investment was not made 2-3 years ago in free agents, international signings of guys in the mold of Puig, etc. The DH battle should not be between Kubel/Parmelee/CC and SS battle between Florimon/Bartlett/Escobar.

He was unranked in 2011 and 2012 and #80 in 2013. I don't think his numbers last year did much to shoot his value up. So I think Sano, Buxton, Meyer, and Kohl are all too much as they are much higher end guys. But we have one of the worst SS in the leauge as well as a very deep farm system. So something could likely be worked out. In 2013, BA said 70 fielding and 70 arm. 50 speed, 50 bat, and 35 power. In that example, I am guessing they would pick Berrios/Thorpe/Gonslaves/Gibson. I would probably give up Gibson straight up. Thorpe and Berrios is probably too much. But maybe. If you fill the SS hole here you still have the #5 pick to grab another high end arm.

I think Meyer gets a green light on June 1. He is too good to keep in the minors any longer. It makes no sense to keep him in AA or AAA and have KC pitching up here when he will be traded. Regarding an innings limit, it is tough to say. He didn't have TJ, he had shoulder soreness. If we are on track to win 75 games maybe they put him on a limit to be safe. 2012 in low and high A - 129 IP, 2.86 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 139 K, 9.7 K/9 2013 in AA - 78 IP, 2.99 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 100K, 11.7 K/9. 2013 Fall League 26 IP, 3.12 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 28K, 9.7 K/9.

Agree 100%. A ton of things need to go wrong for this rotation to have a 5.25 ERA. Nolasco and a non-Yankee stadium Hughes are hands down better pitchers than anything we had last year. Pelfrey will either be better than his 5.19 ERA or not get starts. And we will likely replace one of five guys that threw 89 mph with no movement with Alex Meyer, who throws 97-98 with an 89 mph wide out slider. This rotation will allow at least 50 fewer runs, and to me that is a dire scenario (average ERA of about 4.75). We were in 49 1 run games last year, so 50 fewer runs would be huge.

Apparently the D-Backs are interested in moving Didi Gregorius and have discussed a deal with the Pirates. This would certainly be worth a call. He is a slick fielding 24 year old. He may never hit a ton, but he has a respectable .250 average, .329 OBP, .693 OPS in 380 MLB at bats as a 23 year old (7 HR). His numbers in the minors were between .700 and .750 OPS. I would not give up Buxton, Sano, Meyer, or Kohl. But he would be an upgrade at SS and he would fit in nicely with our young core. ohttp://a.espncdn.com/i/teamlogos/mlb/med/trans/pit.gif According to Jon Morosi of FOX Sports, the Pittsburgh Pirates "have had trade talks" with the Arizona Diamondbacks about shortstop Didi Gregorius. He also mentions the Yankees, Mets, Reds and Tigers as other teams that might yet enter the conversation for the presumed loser of the starting shortstop battle in Arizona.

Add Meyer to that list. He could get 18-20 starts if he is up in June. Not a full year, but exciting and a lot more to look forward to. I would argue the last time we had a pitching prospect come up that was this talented was 2006.

I am shocked they would refute the claim that they would make a decision based on salary.

I think this discussion has been in the context of us being a bad team, relative to a very bad team last year. For example, I haven't seen a single person suggest we could be .500. I think we have all been realistic.

Roger that. I missed the other post then. To sum up the various approaches. W-L approach. I think logic suggests pitching should be meaningfully better, with a caveat of we are still not league average. The lineup should be about the same, with a little room for upside. Still not a league average offense in the AL. More things would need to go wrong for us to be worse than right for us to be better. Prospect approach - we have Pinto, Buxton, Arcia, Meyer, Gibson, and Tonkin to potentially be excited about. Last year we had Dozier and Arcia. We should have more to be excited about.

How salary comes into play for a guy making $2M is beyond me. Are we to bring our own napkins to the game this year?

I guess I am confused. I was corrected about looking at it only W-L. Then it is more broad then just the young players, also about Kubel and Josh Willingham, who clearly are not part of the rebuilding effort. The only big positive last year was Dozier. This year, Meyer, Hicks, Gibson, Tonkin, Pinto, and seeing Buxton in a Twins uniform all have the potential to be wins. Either way, I think this team will have more wins than last years team and at the end of the year we should have more things to look forward to. So either way this should not be a worse team.

If we are going strictly on PA and IP. Last year we didn't really have a single pitcher step up. Deduno maybe but he is 30 and always hurt. So while he is talented, he is probably not a SP here in 2 years. But Gibson and Meyer are both getting IP this year. Tonkin and others will get some bullpen reps. In the lineup, Pinto will get more reps. Hicks will get as many or more. Santana could get some reps. And one of the best prospects in franchise history will likely get some reps in September. So even from this perspective, I think this team is better.

I don't think this is a fair comparison. A) Pinto will get 40-50% of the reps or he would not have made the team. You won't find 15 better bats at this position than Pinto. If you look at it this way, Mauer then replaces Morneau and his .741 OPS last year. With a career .871 OPS, certainly you agree that Mauer should surpass Justin's production? Logic would suggest Mauer gets more than 113 games as well. Not a lock, but you would think.....

Then it really comes down to Hicks, Meyer, Gibson, Pinto, and a few young relievers and whether they establish themselves.