PDX Twin

I just read an interesting piece by George Will in the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-fix-baseball-even-if-its-broken/2018/07/13/31ad33e8-85fe-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html?utm_term=.42c54fb1a480 He makes an interesting point, and one with which as an economist I must, to some extent, agree. He argues that baseball will "fix itself" from the boredom induced by endless shifts, strikeouts, walks, and homerun swings. Players who can't beat the shift will be less valuable and teams will start looking for players who can (he uses Rod Carew as the archetype). Changing the rules for this purpose (e.g., requiring two players on each side of the infield) is unnecessary. But the adjustment will take some time as players develop different habits and teams invest in different players (and train their young players differently). I tend to agree with this argument, but note that it does not in any way apply to proposed slow-play rule changes. There are no apparent incentives for players to speed up play or for teams to insist on it (unless it is perceived that people stop coming to games because of delays). Bring on the pitch clock!

"Over the past two weeks, we have been counting down our Top 40 Midseason Minnesota Twins Prospect Rankings." If we have been counting down, we should be moving toward the bottom, yet here we are, concluding the list at the top. Weird language this idiomatic English...

1.) Where are you from? Grew up in Wadena, then to Iowa for college, the Bay Area for grad school, Houston for my first job, and now Portland, Ore. 2.) Age Range? 64 3.) What brought you to Twins Daily? I had been following Seth's site for a while for minor league news 4.) Highest level of baseball/softball played? Really, none official. But a friend and I organized a summer "league" in a vacant lot next to the local playground and we would be playing there all afternoon virtually every day of the summer with 4-6 players on each of two teams. 5.) Favorite Twins Player, and favorite underappreciated Twins player, and if you want, favorite current Twins player? Hard choice. I'd have to say Tony Oliva brings back the best memories from the early days. Most underappreciated might be Earl Battey, who was so important to those winning teams of the 1960s. As for today, I appreciate and respect Berrios for his ability, attitude, and effort. I also greatly admire Joe Mauer, who is not perfect and suffers endless indignities on this site as a result. 6.) Favorite non-Twins Daily site/authors? I read the Economist every week cover to cover, which leaves little time for other authors (except TD, of course, one had to have priorities!) 7.) Favorite Twitter follows? None 8.) Other interests outside of baseball. European football, teaching my wonderful students, classical music, playing African marimba, great vegetarian food and (especially) Northwest wine 9.) Favorite part of Twins Daily. Breadth of coverage, including game threads, game reports, and minor-league news and daily reports. 10.) Tell us what we can do better. If someone had the energy (maybe when I retire ...) it would be nice to have a regularly updated spreadsheet or table of the current statistics of the top prospects. I love the summaries of today's stats at the end of the daily minor-league articles, but it is hard to retain the cumulative numbers from day to day, week to week, and month to month. It's cool to know that ZZZ got three hits today, but I'd also like to know what his overall batting statistics look like. I realize that there are lots of sites that offer this information, but having the TD top prospects all in one place for a brief glance would be terrific. 11.) Have you been to any of the Twins Daily "events?" Nope.

On the other hand, after his next error the headline could be "Sano melts at hot corner."

Dozier comes through again in a high-leverage situation.

Jake Cave will be Aaron Hicks in reverse.

So ... controversial point here: There are some advantages to the American system of trading players rather than buying and selling for cash as is the norm in world football. (Principally, it limits the ability of a rich owner to acquire players without giving any up.) But there are serious disadvantages. Monetary economists argue that the advantage of money transactions over barter is the elimination of a "double coincidence of wants." Under barter (as in MLB), we not only have to find a seller with something we want, but he must want something we have. Only a few teams are interested in a 2B and they may not have the ideal trade pieces that the Twins would want for Dozier, for example. One way in which this impacts the Twins currently is the inability to use multiple small sales to finance one big purchase. For example, suppose that we were able to sell 4 players (Dozier, Lynn, Duke, and Rodney, for example) for $5m each. We could then use that money to fund a $20m purchase (Realmuto?). The numbers are made up, but you probably get the idea. Under the current system, no one wants to pick up 4 useful but not stellar players that we could offer (especially a team like Miami). So although we may have sufficient assets to obtain a star, the transaction technology prevents us from doing so. This means that (as per my earlier post) we are left with trading away each of our "little" pieces for other little pieces like non-elite prospects. All of the proposed moves discussed in the article seem to me unlikely to make the Twins better in 2019 and beyond. We are shuffling off little pieces we don't need for someone else's little pieces they don't need. Under a monetary system, we could sell multiple resources that have higher value to others than to us and pool the proceeds to buy a difference-maker.

I couldn't agree more. Our trading strategy seems to consist of acquiring young, future replacement-level players in exchange for old replacement-level players or players with expiring contracts. It's hard to get very excited about that, although I guess Escobar fit that label at the time we obtained him for Liriano.

This would be a good chance to get Trevor May a few innings. Oh wait, ...

At least when the Rangers' secondbaseman bats, we finally have a starter who should handle Odor easy. (Been waiting to use that one all year!)

Interesting. I was trying to twist it into something having to do with photographic plates and Kodak...

Wait ... Who was the manager who made this correct bullpen call?

If only they were playing with only four men ...

Just a thought that hasn't been mentioned: Having a three-man bench makes it really difficult to "manage" a lineup. In the "old days," you could sit a slumping player down for a few days to get his head together. If a player commits a bonehead play due to lack of concentration, he could be benched. But now, with one spot necessarily reserved for the backup catcher, there is practically no bench to sit him on. Sano had options, so we could send him out. But Dozier, Morrison, etc. could have more "mental-health days" if they had a 5-man or 6-man bench as they did a few decades ago. I'm not sure how this affects Molitor in relation to other managers. But if his skills at "managing" his team's mental approach are not strong, this takes away one potential tool.

I can't agree more about the three-outcome syndrome being boring. Watching homeruns is about as interesting as watching weight-lifting. Yes, it's amazing that players can hit the ball a long way, but that doesn't make it fun to watch. A game-changing grand slam? Sure, that's great. But the game transitioning into 3.5 hours of home-run derby is not fun. My favorite plays to watch (ahead of homeruns, walks, or strikeouts) would have to be triples, double-plays, diving and leaping catches, stolen bases, "hustle-doubles," and the occasional quirky play that no one would ever draw up on the tactical chalk board. (Rosario seems to be particularly good at the last ... not always to the Twins' benefit!)

It's easy to see someone like him developing into a manager or front-office executive some day.

It would be very interesting to know more about the human side of this. What went on with the benching and now the demotion? What has his attitude been like in the clubhouse through the slump? How did he react to the news? Based on observables, he totally deserves to ride buses for a while!

What would be lost if baseball became more of a niche sport? It's not going to disappear completely. TV contracts (if such things even exist in a decade) will provide less money. Admission will probably be cheaper as teams attempt to fill their large facilities. Player salaries will have to go down, but most MLB players could lead satisfying lives on a fifth (if not a tenth) of their earnings. But surely the game will still be there for those who love it. I'm not sure this is such a bad thing, especially compared to changing the essential nature of the game to cater to the whims of short attention spans.

When you've dug yourself into a huge hole, just keep on digging...

Perhaps not, but there are mad pharmacologists out there (e.g., BALCO) and the incentives for a team/player to use their products are enormous (e.g., B. Bonds). Testing has improved, but there is still a frontier and beyond it the economics of cheating haven't changed all that much.

I'm a lot more worried about the effectiveness of testing and whether all of the emerging PEDs are being screened effectively than about the frequency and randomness of the tests. Someone earlier raised the issue of differential across teams. Suppose that one team's doc (call it the Red Sox, randomly) comes up with a new PED that is not in the testing regimen ... and maybe isn't even prohibited because no one else knows about it yet. They provide it to their players as a "vitamin supplement" and perhaps even the players do not know the true content. All of the sudden, everyone on the team is hitting .300 and smashing 25 homeruns a year. All of their prospects turn out to be stars once they reach the majors. Even 40-year-old fossil who, in his prime, couldn't make it with the Twins, manages to hit .315 with 38 homeruns. By the time the existence of this substance becomes known, of course, the brilliant team doc has two or three others to try. Can we really be confident that this isn't happening?

It kind of makes you wonder what kind of long-lasting impact the current manager is having on the players. Are they assimilating the same kind of values? It sure seems like the current team makes a lot more fundamental (and mental) errors than Kelly's teams or even Gardenhire's teams did.

Agree, I love watching him pitch. For anyone who might still believe in ethnic personality stereotypes, contemplate the enormous diversity of personalities and attitudes of the Twins' most prominent Latino players: Berrios, Rosario, Escobar, Sano, Santana. Quite a range there!

But once again, despite the late inning heroics and the wonderful come-from-behind victory, we failed to improve our record in one-run games.

Well, since you asked ... BPA for me means Bonneville Power Administration. But then I live in Portland.