gunnarthor

That's true. Jeffress isn't an inconsequential piece.

I've been dismissive of De Leon and Stewart. I don't like Calhoun because I'm not sold on him fixing any problems for the Twins so I don't think he's a good fit in a trade - reports on his glove have been bad - and I think the Dodgers have some pitchers that would be better fits in that range. But Calhoun can hit and maybe he can play third if/when Sano moves to first?

Two years service time vs a couple months and he was 4 years older. Manaea might not be as well regarded as De Leon but he might have been. He was moving up the prospect rankings at the time and jumped into the high 40s in his last year of prospect ranking. He wasn't that far off of De Leon. And if the Twins can hold Dozier for a 1.5 years and get a Manaea, they should do that instead of taking a lesser offer now. The point of comparing the Lucroy, Gomez, Zobrist trades (and others) isn't to find a perfect comparison but rather to show what a reasonable guess of industry value is. I haven't found one single trade that would suggest that a guy like Dozier is worth De Leon and Stewart, for example. Doing that would be a major discount on Dozier's value.

As I said, if you want to give more value to positional scarcity, fine. I think you're giving too much there since, ignoring scarcity, Dozier is more valuable and you're ignoring the concussions that the catcher was dealing with. Lucroy is actually older than Dozier and was traded during his age 30 season, while Dozier would have been traded going into his age 30 season. But, in any event, you're still advocating that the Twins trade Dozier for 60 cents on the dollar and very arguably lesser returns than what Zorbrist, Lucroy and Gomez got.

Sure, there may be a supply/demand issue but that shouldn't stop the Twins from demanding a high return. You see the same value exchange in the other deals, as well. Is De Leon + junk really a better offer than Manaea and the relief arm the A's got for a half season of Zorbrist? There should be no reason (or acceptance) to trade Dozier for 60 cents on the dollar.

By what metric? By WAR, Dozier has been the better player, by years of control, Dozier is more valuable. Dozier is more durable. If you want to argue that catchers have more value because they're catchers, fine, but LuCroy was also coming off of concussion injuries so that should limit it somewhat. Even if you think LuCroy is more valuable, it can't be that much more valuable. Maybe instead of a top 15, top 50 and AAAA type, you think Dozier is worth a top 30, a top 100 and a lottery ticket.

I'm really glad that CNN is accurately reporting on Spicer's press conference. If the media keeps fact checking Trump rather than going with a "he said/she said" narrative, a lot of his **** could be DOA. http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/21/media/sean-spicer-press-secretary-statement/index.html

Damn. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/01/yordano-ventura-dies-in-car-crash.html And I hadn't even heard that Andy Marte died in a car accident as well.

How much value did Lucroy have to the Brewers? They got the #15 and # 52 prospects for him plus a AAAA player. I think it's hard to argue that 1.5 years of Lucroy was that much more valuable to the Rangers than 2 years of Dozier would be to the Dodgers, and the Brewers were going nowhere.

It's probably a loaded question but here are my thoughts - first, the Twins have graduated the 2012 draft class (five players made the majors - Buxton, Berrios, Duffey, Rogers and Chargois) and Melotakis might still make it. So I think they aced that draft. So the 2013-2016 drafts are what we're discussing where we had the 4th, 5th, 6th and 15 picks (IIRC). I loved the 2016 draft and Kiriloff is pretty well regarded prospect but that whole class is pretty far away and very young - I think they drafted four 17 year olds. So the real issue is the 2013-2015 drafts. The first round picks - Stewart, Gordon and Jay - were all decent picks at the time so I don't have problems with any of them. And all three have been subjects of lots of discussion here. The 2013 draft seems (to me) the most sensible draft - Stewart was a good pick at #4 and they did a nice job of switching between young HS high ceiling talent (Gonsalves, Naveretto) and safe college floor (Eades, Garver, Slegers). And only 15 of the 39 first round picks have even made the majors yet, so it's probably too early to bury this draft class but it's pretty clear that they don't have a future ace or MVP in it. It looked better at the time but it could still hold up - Gonsalves and Stewart were two of the youngest pitchers in AA last year, Garver looks like a low-end starter or strong back up ML catcher. 2014 looks worse. The first two picks - Gordon and Burdi - could absolutely save this draft but Burdi's been hurt. I think the world of Gordon and think he's in the Kepler range of prospects but after those two, the Twins drafted 6 or 7 relievers. I understand the strategy but was never in favor of it. It doesn't seem like it's worked (and Deron Johnson has been promoted out of this role) but Jake Reed could be a strong bullpen arm. But this wasn't a great draft. And, in fairness, it wasn't a particularly strong draft class so maybe the Twins thought velocity - even if it's just relievers - was the way to go. But this is probably a good reminder on how tough drafts are. Burdi was a great second round pick (most mocks had him going in the first round) but injuries are a real problem. 2015 was the Jay draft. Jay was a controversial pick and then the Twins didn't pick again until #73 (who didn't even sign). But they did a better job of mixing up their picks and took Blankenhorn and Cabbage in the third round. Considering they didn't have a second round pick, the #6 pick was really important. I think if you feel that Jay can start, you're ok with this draft (and the system) but if you think he's another reliever (even a top closer) you're pretty down on this one. I'm torn but I liked the Jay pick - I wanted the Twins to take Daz Cameron - and there wasn't an obvious choice at 6. I think the Twins were linked to guys like Allard, Stephenson and Fullmer a lot, as well. So my thoughts are that the Twins drafts from 2013-2016 are more or less about what they should have been, depending on how you view drafts, with the 2014 draft being the weakest. They haven't (as of yet) had a late round player break out (but that's not surprising since we don't usually know we have a Dozier for a few years) and their first round picks seem to not approach their ceilings but will be MLers. The Twins gave up one second round pick in there to sign Santana, as well. But they've managed to draft some depth and each of these drafts could give the Twins two major league caliber starter, which is pretty good for a draft class. So I think the thoughts of Klaw and the fangraphs writer are fairly accurate - they don't have an ace or future MVP in the system but it's a very deep system. It's also worth remembering that this is a very young group of prospects.

Looking at other trades over the years, the idea that Dozier should get a top 35ish pitcher in De Leon and a backend non top 100 prospect like Stewart is a pretty bad deal for the Twins. Dozier should be worth roughly 8 WAR for the Dodgers over two years - the Gomez/Friers deal, the Giles deal, the Lucroy deal, the Zorbrist deal have shown the spending team has to pay a lot more than De Leon/Stewart. I said that the Twins should expect two top 100 prospects - one in the top 40 and the other in the 50-80 range - plus two lottery tickets. That seems reasonable. If they Twins don't get that, don't trade Dozier.

I think I'm probably the high man on Gordon around here - I think he's in the Kepler/Berrios tier of prospects. Nice article. Really looking forward to seeing him play this year.

No, in a BA chat, one of their writers suggested that. That's not the official BA view (they have multiple guys to get a group consensus first) but it does suggest that BA might be low on the Twins. My guess (and it's just a guess) is that Jay is the dividing line - if you think he can start, the system jumps up a few notches, if he's a reliever, it stays down.

According to most relevant sources, such as Steve Adams at mlbtraderumors, the offer is De Leon by himself or De Leon and "junk" (Adams words). No one - aside from Dave - has suggested that the Dodgers are offering De Leon and Alvarez and national writers have suggested that the Dodgers think that De Leon and STEWART are too much to give up. Again, ignoring Dave, the Dogers list of untouchables in a Dozier trade apparently includes Urias, Bellinger, Alvarez, Stewart, Buehler, Lux and Verdugo (according to different multiple sources). So right now I think it's pretty fair to say that the Dodgers haven't given the Twins an offer that any of us think is fair and that the Twins are right to have moved off of the talks. If you, Levi, think the Twins have been given an offer of De Leon and Calhoun, for instance, and you feel that would have been a fair offer, fine.

I figure that's what the Dodgers do, which is fine for me since we've all agreed that the Dodgers haven't made a good enough trade offer for Dozier. I would expect Lavine do start signing some bullpen arms soon, though. They've been too quiet on that front.

Looking around at various fan websites - which obviously aren't 100% accurate way to gauge anything - it still seems that Rays fans and Tiger fans think the Dodgers aren't offering fair value for their second basemen, either. I'm really not sure what happens but I think the Dodgers will go with Utley and the Twins will start the season with Dozier and Polanco up the middle.

Yeah, system rankings are really slow which is a pain since there isn't much else to talk about right now.

Hey, Rivas was a top ranked prospect. Those guys don't miss, apparently.

You might be over rating how many future #1 type pitchers are above short season ball.

I do think if we are going to let relievers into the HOF (and it looks like we are) Hoffman should be there. I'm not sure how much I like putting relievers into the HOF though. Obviously, Jack Morris and Jim Kaat and Kevin Brown were better pitchers than Hoffman or Rivera. Those two were arguably better at their roles but I'm not sure they were better pitchers (in fact, I'm sure they weren't). But that ship has sailed.

There's probably real value in having ML-quality depth, even if there isn't another Buxton or Berrios right now. That's one of the things we fans tend to under appreciate. The fangraphs guy who ranked De Leon a future #3/4 has said in his chats that this is a good thing. There aren't that many aces floating around and just having serviceable depth so you don't have to give Albers 30 starts is good for a system. Considering the recent graduations the Twins have had, they are probably in a pretty good place.

I think that's fair. The two biggest jumps (as I understand it) are from rookie ball to A and then from A+ to AA. So a 18 year old kid kicking ass against other 18 year old kid in 3 months of ball probably doesn't mean as much.

I would imagine Sickels will be the high man on our system.

Well, putting aside PEDs, ARod is the best but Jones, ARod and Griffey can all argue pretty well for that honor. Mauer gets to argue for #4. But I think Stark's point - that Atlanta got the full value of that pick - makes some sense as well although it doesn't include the $$$ spent to keep him.

But 5 seasons of extra starts seems to offset the rate stat difference, IMHO, and make him a much easier HOFer for voters. Glavine did things that can separate him from Kevin Brown easier than Moose and Schilling did.