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gunnarthor

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Everything posted by gunnarthor

  1. gunnarthor
    I'm not sure that you're second assumption is right. Yes, I think you're (generally) right about a guy like Darvish helping if he's not hurt and a Chatwood might not help even if healthy but you are way underrating the longterm harm the Twins would face if a Darvish contract blows up on them the way Hughes' contract did. What if Darvish gets his 7/175m contract and busts after year two? The Twins owe him 125m more yet get nothing out of that? Every year they hope that they can get some good starts out of him only to send him out for a Phil Huges-like run and then return him to the DL? He'll take away starts from young guys and he'll be worth negative WAR but because we still owe him that money, he'll get his chances. That would be a much bigger problem than if Chatwood's 4y/48m deal doesn't work.
  2. gunnarthor
    It's a "win" because the Twins didn't sell Dozier for 60 cents on the dollar. They could still trade Dozier (or a different MI) this year and get a better offer. If they had moved Dozier, they (likely) couldn't have. I'd also point out that the Yankees ace couldn't make it out of the first inning. Pitching is rough all around. Kyle Gibson would have been arguably the Angels best pitcher last year. So while the back of the rotation isn't set and the front doesn't have a true ace, we do have pieces in place and the ability to get something in free agency as well (or through a trade).
  3. gunnarthor
    But we have a good pitch framer now ...
  4. gunnarthor
    He played the young guys. Look at his rosters. Lohse had a 144 starts through his age 25 season. In another thread, we noted that vets made about 8% of all starts for the Twins from 02-10 and that counts Radke's two free agent seasons. It's an absolute lie that Gardy played vets over his young guys. You can't change the nucleus of a team like the Twins did without relying on the young players. And yes, I've been following the Twins back in the days and the BYTO forum were full of some of the dumbest most negative posters around. Those posters found negatives in the most neutral comments he made. The ESPN forums were much better (which tells you something). The manager that is throwing players under the bus has been Molitor not Gardy.
  5. gunnarthor
    I like the idea of Chatwood a lot more than Lynn. He's younger and won't cost as much. Huge advantages. He's not exactly Phil Hughes but the narrative about getting out of a certain park is the same. I think he could be a solid #4 type (a good thing). He'd still probably get 12m/year though.
  6. gunnarthor
    Gardy played young guys over vets nearly all the time. He didn't throw players under the bus, he kept most of it in-house. Molitor has done far more of that in his three years than Gardy did his entire time. The Gardy bashing has gotten out of hand over the years. He was a very good manager.
  7. gunnarthor
    Interestingly, the Twins never had five straight 90 loss seasons under Gardy. That seems like a bit of false narrative there. He's a good manager, hope he does well there.
  8. gunnarthor
    In Twins history, the players who pushed back against position and/or role changes or being dropped in the lineup included Kirby Pucket, Joe Mauer, Glen Perkins, Rick Aguilera, Kevin Slowey, Kevin Tapani, Scott Erickson, Dave Winfield, ... Athletes have big egos and don't want to be told they can't do something anymore. That's not a big issue for me.
  9. gunnarthor
    This seems pretty light for Sano. I don't see what he gains from giving up prime earning years at such a discount.
  10. gunnarthor
    You're putting a lot of faith in WAR and I'm not sure you should. I like using WAR to say that Buxton is already a 5 WAR guy but really, WAR is pretty suspect and it's measurements of defense and baserunning are even worse. I don't think it tells us anything. The reason Kepler has a higher bWAR is because bWAR doesn't like Rosario's defense. fWAR, for what it's worth, has Rosario with double the WAR of Kepler. I don't think Rosario's a bad baserunner, in fact, I think he's very good at it. I suspect that's a stat that fluctuates wildly year to year but he certainly passes the eye test. Defensively, it got knocked down too much. There have been articles out there that have said that if you have three good defenders in the OF, one of them is going to be negatively affected by the other two. bWAR has Rosario in Delmon Young/Josh Willingham territory defensively. No way was he that bad. Rosario, unlike Kepler, has shown ability to hit and he made remarkable improvements this year. I like both players. I don't want us to trade either unless our doors are knocked off. But Rosario is the more complete player right now and, I suspect, will continue to be the better all around player.
  11. gunnarthor
    Payroll is the big question. I think we'll have a payroll around 110m which gives us about 20m to play with in free agency. But someone posted Forbes estimates of revenue for the Twins and if that was correct and if Twins still use 52% of revenue for payroll (as opposed to all monies spent on salaries such as draft and international bonuses) then our payroll could be closer to 140m.
  12. gunnarthor
    It's a drop in the bucket compared to the owners.
  13. gunnarthor
    No. He just came off a 5 WAR season as his agent knows. The reason the Twins want to extend him is because they know (and his agent knows they know) that Buxton is an elite player. Buxton is going to get paid a lot the next few years through arbitration. The numbers you suggest are probably low but even if they were 100% correct, he'll get that money regardless of whether he signs an extension now. The only way he doesn't get that money is if he suffers a career ending injury. If not, he's set. He's already made 6m in a signing bonus and over a million in salary. Plus he has endorsement contracts. Hopefully he's got a smart business guy watching his funds. There should be no reason for him to give up three years of free agency for 54m, as you suggest. Machado and Harper are going to break baseball's salary structure next offseason and Buxton is going to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of that.
  14. gunnarthor
    I think Buxton would get a lot more than 100m. He's much closer to Trout's contract than Upton's, which is 7 years old already and he signed it coming off a down year. Buxton was a 5 WAR player this year and everyone thinks this will be his worst year for some time. He's going to be a FA at 28. He has no incentive to give away his age 28-30 years for essentially a promise of 24m through his arbitration years - which are also set too low by probably 10m. When he gets to FA, he's going to be one of the 10 highest paid players in baseball. And it probably won't be by the Pohlads.
  15. gunnarthor
    If you think ownership has made legit efforts to increase revenue streams in the last twenty years, fine. If they did make the effort then they are incredibly incompetent group. More likely, they didn't make the efforts because doing so hurt their long term goal of getting a publicly financed stadium. When we compare market size to we see that the Twins lag behind comparable communities by a lot. We've seen the new GM already make excuses for payroll. We have bad owners. I do not buy for a second that the Twins were unable to increase revenue streams in the 2000s because MN wasn't the right sort of market for them. They had a decade of winning. During that time, ownership constantly held back against signing bonuses and increasing our efforts in foreign markets. Ownership has given out exactly one legit big contract - to Joe Mauer - and that's the entire extent of financial largess they've given the fan base. In the last few years we've already heard Jim Pohlad whine about the contracts he gave out to Nolasco as being misspent meaning he has no understanding of the risks of FA.
  16. gunnarthor
    I'm not sure if it's a good move or not but he's well regarded. I think Callis was better at the prospecting part while Manuel was a better writer. But we'll see.
  17. gunnarthor
    There is no reason for Buxton to sign such a team friendly deal.
  18. gunnarthor
    The Twins did have a run of sustained success and it didn't do jack ****. The Twins were 27th in payroll in 2002 and 27th in payroll in 2009 because "without a new stadium, the Twins couldn't compete." They opened TF in 2010, jumped to 10th in payroll, peaked at 9th in 2011 and immediately cut payroll. They are back down in the 20s and have stayed there. Ownership never pushed for revenue streams outside of a new stadium. They didn't get a big TV contract like other teams, as others noted, their radio presence was minor. The Twin Cities is a good market - comparable in size and dollars to St. Louis and Seattle. Ownership is bad.
  19. gunnarthor
    Nice.
  20. gunnarthor
    Actually, no. Good owners invest in their team to increase their profit margins and revenue. The Pohlad family sat on their ass for over 15 years to get a tax funded stadium from us. They didn't do the stuff that teams like Texas and Colorado (let alone LA and NY) by making strong strides to improve TV contracts, social media or even baseball operation departments. The family treated the Twins as a small revenue stream and didn't invest in it. They are among the worst owners in the league. The Twins are in a strong market in what could easily be a baseball town and should be able to have the resources the Cardinals or Seattle have but failed to create those because they were waiting for us to give them millions of dollars instead and investing in the team killed the narrative that a new stadium was the only way to compete.
  21. gunnarthor
    Wow, false narratives have a lot of lasting power.
  22. gunnarthor
    I wonder if that's just cyclical or a new trend. 15 this year and 15 last year but 28 in 2015 and well over 30 in 2014 and 2013. I honestly don't know but would guess it's just more random than anything. Right now teams might be overly reliant on bullpen + a shortage of good pitchers = less starting pitcher innings. But those things can change. I think on the Twins staff Santana, Berrios (185 innings this year) and even Gibson (195 innings in 2015) could throw 200 innings in a season in a good year so we'll see.
  23. gunnarthor
    Seattle preferred Texas' offer.
  24. gunnarthor
    If that's true and IF the Twins still make payroll 52 percent of revenue, that would put payroll near 130m - which would mean the Twins could feasibly add 40m in free agents and/or trade contracts this offseason. I'd be stunned if that actually was our payroll.
  25. gunnarthor
    It wasn't the rotation that was the problem, it was the bullpen. Radke, Mays, Milton all pitched well in the 02 postseason and 03 as well as you noted. 04 got two good starts out of Santana and a bad one out of Silva and Radke. 06 got two good starts from Santana and Boof and a bad start from a broken Radke. 09 both Blackburn and Pavano pitched well against the Yankees. Duensing did not. But 2010 was three bad starts in a three game sweep. And the consistent calls to add a top line starter was unrealistic then as it now. The 2000 era Twins could never bring on that kind of payroll. It was like guys wishing we signed Max Scherzer now.
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