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gunnarthor

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Everything posted by gunnarthor

  1. gunnarthor
    The new FO has to worry about things like attendance as well as how ownership looks. If they bench Mauer, a lot of casual fans won't be as interested and benching him suggests ownership wasted 40m+ dollars. I doubt the FO is going to make those kind of moves early in their run when they have other things to focus on. And, as bad as Mauer was, he wasn't a complete black hole and it's a pretty open question if Vargas would be better.
  2. gunnarthor
    Barring an injury, I would expect Sano to start the season at third base. The team is stuck with Mauer at one of 1B/DH. My guess is that the new FO will look to see what a Dozier deal looks like and possibly see if they can scare up interest in Kepler but probably not do a lot to that offensive side quite yet. They probably need time to evaluate and they have other priorities (pitching and catcher). I would imagine the lineup would look something pretty close to: C- FA and one of Murphy/Garver/Centeno 1B - Mauer 2B - Dozier SS - Polanco 3B - Sano OF - Rosario/Buxton/Kepler - if those three can hit, are they a good defensive OF? I think they'd be ok but only Buxton would really be elite. Bench - backup catcher/Park/UI/4thOF with the Twins trading one of Park/Vargas Obviously, trading Dozier would make a bunch of changes but several of the positions seem fairly close to set. Sano, Buxton, Rosario, Kepler, Mauer and Polanco will be starting at some position.
  3. gunnarthor
    I didn't want to clip your entire post. Here's the point I'm trying to make. Looking at only players who amassed at least 1 WAR, the Cubs this year got about 22 WAR from FA, that's the largest group of WAR talent on the team. Trades and drafts combined for about 31 WAR. Cleveland got about 8 WAR from FA this year. They got 39 WAR from trades and the draft. That's the model the Twins will have to follow. And the payroll differences of those teams and those groups is gigantic.
  4. gunnarthor
    Things like drafting, trades, development etc are things ALL teams do - it's the reason Cleveland is in the WS this year and the reason the Royals won it last year. No one thinks the Twins can't or shouldn't do that. But comparing the Twins to the Cubs - the "it" team of the moment - is a purposefully false comparison. The Cubs are where they are because of payroll. They wouldn't be the Cubs without that payroll. If they had the limits the Twins had, there is no evidence that they would be in the WS. There is evidence that teams with similar or worse payroll handicaps to the Twins have made the WS and those are the teams we should be looking at.
  5. gunnarthor
    I don't think anyone has suggested that. I think most of us realize that we can't pay our way out of the issues like big payroll teams can. Pretending that the Twins could do what the Cubs did is fantasy. The Cubs are paying their 3 FA starters (Lester, Lackey, Hammel) 50m this year. For all the complaining about how the Twins misspend money for Hughes, Nolasco and Santana, just those three players made 16m less then their Cubs counterparts. And, unlike the Cubs, the Twins aren't going to be able to add 20m in salaries at the trade deadline. Payroll is a huge advantage that, for some reason, people just don't want to accept. When the Cubs 20+m hitter puts up worse numbers than Buxton, it's an inconvenience because that player isn't expected to be the key player for them. That was just the cost of adding a complementary player.
  6. gunnarthor
    As long as the Pohlad's own this team, you're never going to see a high payroll. Cleveland and the Royals are the teams the Twins should be copying. Cleveland traded for Kluber - who was never a top 100 prospect - for example. The Cubs have advantages that the Twins, Royals and Cleveland don't so it doesn't make sense to compare. Teams with 200m payrolls can erase errors that the Twins can't/won't.
  7. gunnarthor
    It seems that we should probably focus on what teams in our payroll (and maybe our league) are doing - maybe the last two WS teams? I get that that Cubs are the "it" team but they really aren't a good comparison to what the Twins can do.
  8. gunnarthor
    We're picking up more Disney stock. Nothing overly sexy about that but we like it and low 90s is a decent area to grab more at.
  9. gunnarthor
    I'm not sure how much his secondary stuff can improve against HS competition - if those kids can't hit his 98 mph fastball, there's not a lot of incentive to not throw it.
  10. gunnarthor
    Do you know who the Twins pitching development people are? Do you know how long they've doing those jobs?
  11. gunnarthor
    Well, barring injury of course. That said, he sounds to me a bit more like (a better) Kolak than Bundy. Bundy was nearly a finished product when he was drafted in 2011. Greene might need more work but his arm is amazing.
  12. gunnarthor
    I think it suggests that the industry weighs the risk of the HS arm a bit more than we fans do. A few LH starters have gone 1-1 (including Brady Aiken) but LH starters are rarer.
  13. gunnarthor
    I certainly won't complain if the Twins take that risk but we have a while before we have to really narrow it down. He has season to pitch yet and some of the college arms could break out as well. I hope they go BPA and I'm hoping that BPA is a college arm.
  14. gunnarthor
    In the first round of that 06 draft, 8 HS pitchers were taken. Two have amassed more than 1 WAR in the majors. Nine of the 16 college arms taken in the first round have amassed more than 1 WAR in the majors. Drafting HS pitchers is risky. I'm good with drafting HS arms but it's important to remember that they don't always work out and it's not necessarily because the team can't develop pitchers. There's a lot that can go wrong and a lot worse possibilities than what Kohl Stewart has shown so far. (And Strasburg was considered a nearly perfect college pitcher who could step into a ML rotation from day one. Not really fair to compare him to a HS pitcher who was working mostly on his football game).
  15. gunnarthor
    Well, what were Smith's big signings in 2010? The rules changed on international signings and the Twins have done pretty well so I'm not sure it's fair to say they haven't spent after Smith. They haven't nabbed a guy as universally acclaimed as Sano but they have spent a lot on guys (Javier) and they've spent their pool. Some years, they've gone quality and some years they've gone quantity. It's a bit too early to say how they've done - Lewin Diaz, for example, signed in 2013, just reached rookie ball. But after 09, they've signed guys like Romero, Jorge, Thorpe, Ynoa, Vielma etc
  16. gunnarthor
    Yeah, but we knew he wouldn't. IIRC, the consensus was the Twins would nab the pitcher that was left - Appel, Gray or Stewart. There was some discussion of the two Georgia OFers but they were secondary to pitching.
  17. gunnarthor
    I don't think anyone doubts that but most of us can see that there are pretty good reasons to hope that those core guys (Vargas is not a core guy) will be pretty good. Kepler had a 2.5 WAR season, Buxton's WAR was 1.9 and that shows his offensive floor is pretty low to be a strong player in the league. Sano's defense was horrible - esp in the OF - but he still hit 25hr and put up a 110 OPS+ in what we all think is a bad year. Mauer hasn't topped 110 since 2013. Berrios did have a disaster season. I also think it's worth remembering - since this is a prospects thread - what the expectations were of these guys. Sano and Buxton were always elite guys and cream of the crop. But Berrios was an undersized supplemental first round pick that developed into a top 15 prospect. Kepler (and Polanco) were big signings for us as Twins fans because it was an exciting year and there was something unique about Kepler but neither were big international signings that year. Both were in the 15-20 range in bonuses. Both developed into pretty darn good prospects. No team will ever draft perfectly - look at how few drafted players are part of the Cubs or Cleveland or even the Nats, for instance. But I do think that Steil and company have done a really nice job of developing players since he took over in 2012. If you get two players out of a draft, it's a good draft and I think most of those drafts we can get at least that.
  18. gunnarthor
    Well good luck to all of them
  19. gunnarthor
    Another degree? You know the Librarian isn't a real job, right?
  20. gunnarthor
    Nice write up. I think we might need to pump the breaks a bit on Gonsalves. He's nice but he still probably profiles as a #3 type. I like him a lot but we might be over ranking him a bit. That said, with him, Romero and Jay in the top five, we have some impressive arms. It's unlikely that they all reach their ceiling of course but those are nice chips to have. Let's see where Jay is a year from now before we worry too much about his future role. Romero's break-out has been fun to watch. I really hope he can stay healthy. I'd probably have him #2 in front of Gonsalves. I think Gordon is clearly our #1 prospect right now but I'd like to see him draw a few more walks. Kiriloff is a fun pick but far away. But his bat really could be special. He'll be fun to watch. I think he's probably our best true hitter prospect we've had since Sano.
  21. gunnarthor
    Maddux was also in AAA at 20 ....
  22. gunnarthor
    On Stewart, I wonder if a workable comp for him becomes Mike Pelfrey. Pelfrey could hit 94-95 and got a lot of ground balls - although Stewart seems to be better at that. Pelfrey was never a big strike out guy but did turn in a nice enough 10+ year ML career. They can't all turn into all-stars but if Stewart can be a slightly healthier, slightly better Pelfrey, that's not that bad. He's been pretty durable so far. I've said it a lot but I really liked the Blankenhorn/Cabbage picks and while Cabbage is lagging, Blankenhorn is doing very well. I think, for all the griping we do about our scouts, they've found some nice young players these last few years and/or Steil's changes in the farm have really helped. Javier is probably a bit too high but I like him. He's just too raw to be a top 10 guy right now. I'm probably a bit more conservative on Diaz, too. Maybe should be in the 10-15 range for now. To make it to the bigs, he's going to have to be an elite bat and he needs to work on plate discipline a bit. But the Twins do have some power in the minors. That's always fun. Why wasn't Mejia brought up in Sept? Was he hurt? Seems like a good place in the rankings for him and it was a solid trade. Hopefully he can provide us with some stability in the rotation next year.
  23. gunnarthor
    I liked the Burdi pick but until he can remain healthy, he's really nothing. I don't like that he missed the entire season and didn't need surgery. That seems like maybe we missed something and next year he will need surgery. Hope that doesn't happen. I like Wade. He gets on base a lot. That's a good thing. Ynoa is exciting and should be fun to watch develop. He's far away but could be a real stud. I'm far less enthusiastic about Jorge. I think you have him ranked too high. And Palka's a nice lottery ticket. Like Walker, he probably can't get the strike outs under control but if he does... wow.
  24. gunnarthor
    We're a bit on the conservative side with our investments - as I've mentioned frequently, I love big dividend stocks. We have a lot in index funds that track the S&P, which grow at about 7-8% but also reinvests in itself. I think on average over the last 10+ years, we've probably done slightly better than the market (maybe in the 10+% range) but certainly not near 20% a year but over a two or three year period, we probably have. Frankly, from 06-08 I'm sure we were well over 20% and then the banking crisis happened. Over the last three years, I think we're probably in the 15% range because of a few specific stocks. I would say that as we've gotten older, our investing strategy has shifted. When we were young and dumb we bought a lot of stocks and carried a lot of debt - student loans, mortgages, car payments, etc. Even though they were all low interest (we never carried much CC debt which will kill you) we still had real debt. As we've gotten older, we've done a better job of mixing long term investing and paying off debt. So even though today our investment portfolio has less $ in it than it had before the banking crisis (we lost a **** load, **** you Wachovia), we are wealthier b/c we don't have the debt anymore. edit - I know you didn't ask about the second paragraph but I wrote it anyway.
  25. gunnarthor
    Thorpe's the obvious big name on here - baseball prospectus ranked him in their top 101 before his injury. Rortvedt seems low here and I'm not excited about the other three but hopefully I'm wrong.
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