gunnarthor

I think most of us think the most important aspect of the next manager will be his ability to get the young guys playing well. So I thought it would be interesting to see how well Farrell has done it as Lovullo has been Farrell's bench coach the last four years. In those four years, Farrell's team under performed their pyth w/l record by a bit over a game a year but won the WS once. This year, Farrell's Red Sox were pretty bad. They had a bunch of young players who did not perform. Jackie Bradley jr is comparable to Aaron Hicks except he hit a lot worse. Bradley was universally a top 50 prospect coming into the season. Xander Bogaerts was one of the few prospects who was rated higher than Sano coming into the year. Despite playing in Fenway, he was basically a replacement level player and put up a .660 OPS. His defense regressed. Mookie Betts was their Danny Santana, although unlike Santana, Betts had been a top 100 prospect. He played mostly IF in the minors but was put in the OF by the Red Sox. He hit well and was on a 6 WAR pace in 50 games. In 2013, Farrell had two rookies - Jose Iglesias and Bradley again. Both had been top 100 guys but neither really shined. Iglesias was in the Peavy trade and ended up in Detroit. That team won the WS but was absolutely carried by vets. They had 12 guys with 2+ WAR and the youngest was 28. His stint with the Blue Jays (11-12) didn't have many rookies but he had mixed results with some young guys. Rasmus struggled under him but Brandon Marrow had two ok seasons, for instance. So, I guess I don't really know what that suggests. I'm not sure Lovullo has some insights to young guys that Molitor or Dougie Baseball doesn't have. But I'm not sure it's fair to say that Bradley/Bogaerts didn't develop so Lovullo must not know what's going on either. I don't think I'd hire him just b/c he was on the Red Sox 2013 bench either.

I think Masterson could be a nice buy low guy, sorta like Hughes last year. If he's healthy, I'd try and get him over most of these other guys.

From 99-07 (his last year), Twins pitchers were third out of 30 in pWAR, behind only the Yankees and Red Sox. He's brought in quite a few good arms over the years.

I'm fine with any of the three. I hate the idea of disqualifying Molitor or Dougie Baseball just b/c they work for the Twins. That's a stupid idea. And Ryan had no problem picking Gardy despite being part of a coaching staff that had lost a lot prior to 2001. It is interesting that Lovullo has been a finalist for a lot of jobs but never hired.

Nice link. Dozier was a really nice steal in that draft. I think it's important for people to realize how tough drafts are. Two starters in one draft is very good, esp when you're drafting in the bottom third.

I'm rooting for KC and I think they will win it. Interesting side bit, I have an old friend I met in law school who is now an international scout for the Royals in Asia. The Royals brought him and the rest of the international scouts into KC for games 1&2 and a big team dinner. He's pretty excited about it.

Burdi and Ceredoh.

If Ryan traded Plouffe and Dozier for Kemp, he wouldn't be GM ten minutes later.

Who is managing the AFL teams?

I'm more pessimistic on this than I thought. At this point, I don't think the Twins should count on him to be any better than he was. If he improves, great. But don't expect much more. His babip was around normal for him, he didn't play catcher but couldn't stay healthy. He'll be 32 next year. Lots of guys are done at 32. I also don't think he has the ability to hit with power against the shifts baseball has used against him. The hard part will be what they do if he stays this way. His OBP was still pretty respectable and would fit in the #2 spot. But his bat really isn't better than that and the Twins might have better options in the next few years at the top of the order. He could be a #7 hitter in 2016.

mlbtraderumors has a write up on Masterson - http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/10/free-agent-profile-justin-masterson.html He wasn't very good last year but 2013 he looked really good. Battled a bunch of injuries last year and eventually got moved to the pen this year. But he's a big groundball pitcher with solid strike out numbers. If healthy, he could be a steal on a Hughes like deal (if he'd take it). The article suggests he'd want a make good, one year deal instead. But they said that last year about Hughes, too. He's a bit older than Hughes so a 3 year deal would make him a FA after his age 32 season, so he might not want to do that. Not sure. But he seems the type of pitcher the Twins would target, they certainly know a lot about him from his time in Cleveland and he seems like a nice person - he is going to Africa to help build orphanages in the offseason.

I think I read that a .500 team is roughly 35 WAR. Twins were around 25, so they'd have to improve my 10 WAR, keeping in mind some regression by others. Looking at the 2000/2001 Twins, you saw them make significant increases from one year to the next mostly by doing three things: 1) Have breakout seasons by former top 100 prospects (in that case Hunter and Guzman) 2) Have a really strong year from a surprising - i.e. unranked prospect or small FA signing - source (Koskie) 3) Have very little negative value on your team. 3 position players had negative value that year and TK gave them all of 70 AB. Everyone else was at least 0 WAR or better. So these Twins could certainly fit the bill. They have a lot of top 100 guys who could break out. They have "surprise" guys in Plouffe and Dozier already. They got a lot of negative WAR last year from Kubel, Colabello, Morales, Hermann, May, Pelfrey etc.

A few things wrong with this. First, of the Twins best prospects only Sano and Polanco are Smith guys. I'm also sure it's fair to say that he's dong what any other GM would do with those picks. The Astros have absolutely torpedo their drafts (and they've drafted above us in everyone).

Eh. First, the GM has a huge say in the first round pick, esp at the top of the board. Second, when Ryan came back, he publicly stated that he and Radcliff would have input on the draft. He didn't mention Johnson (and Johnson has had some bad results prior in the draft). Third, there was no way the Twins could pass on college ready pitchers to get a HS kid that everyone thought would take many years to develop without specific approval from the GM. Fourth, when Ryan wasn't the GM, his generalized area to cover was the SE and PR. Twins drafted heavily from those areas once he came back to the GM chair. Lastly, ever report indicated that Ryan (like all GMs) would see the players. Secondly, a lot of the Ryan talk is code for the FO. A lot of anti-Ryan guys use thoughts about the Twins being stuck in their ways etc. It's an attack on the whole FO not just Ryan. So it's fair to use Ryan both ways.

I'm old enough to remember Tom Kelly dogging Todd Walker for his defensive deficiencies. There wasn't much of an internet then but there were a few people attacking the Twins for their over reliance on defense. And then, years later, the advanced stats showed exactly what TK was saying.

I honestly don't know how much the Twins shift and before this year, I don't remember people caring. I do remember years ago when I lived out east and had ML extra innings package, I got the White Sox feed. And their guys were saying that the Twins were shifting Delmon Young real close to the LF line against several LH hitters and it was really working against Chicago. Hawk said something like the Twins advanced scouts must have seen something to put him (Delmon) that close to the line. I also remember KLaw liking the Orlando Hudson signing and he felt Hudson's defense was better than it showed in LA (and several year downward trend) b/c the Twins were more likely to position him better before the at-bat. And his defensive numbers did increase that year with us.

I was never very high on him as a prospect but I was wrong. He'll be a stud. He clearly cares about hitting and smart enough to figure it out. I think next year could be a really big year for him.

Probably, but the league top 20s and the final list can be pretty different at times, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that only one person does the league top 20 while a group works on the the top 100 list.

I was using the 07 list - the 08 list is made up of guys that Smith, the new GM, added. Smith (for many reasons) never was able to get the farm system back to where Ryan left it. The 07 list had 4 guys, the 06 list had 5, etc. But the idea that Ryan left the cupboard bare isn't true. We had a well stocked system his last year with us and a lot of recently well regarded graduates.

Well, obviously that's true. But Ryan hasn't missed on all his trades. In fact, most look good and he didn't have a lot of highend talent to trade off (except the Span trade).

No one knows how much any team uses advanced stats. Twins, like all teams, keep it close to the vest. Incidentally, the worst team defensively this year was Houston. And they shifted the most.

The Span trade was exactly the type of trade the Twins should have done. They got back a potential true #1 in Meyer, but he was far away. Potential was the key. It might turn out that Meyer dies tomorrow in a car accident. That would suck. But the team made the type of moves a rebuilding team needs to make - trade off talent that won't be part of the future.

The idea that Ryan left the cupboard bare isn't completely true. When he left, the Twins had a pretty young nucleus of talent in the majors and 4 guys in BA top 100. The idea that the Twins had bad pitching under Ryan is also demonstratively false. In fact, the knock on Ryan used to be that he couldn't draft hitters. From 2000-2007, the Twins were 3rd in all of baseball in pitching WAR with only the Red Sox and Yankees above them. Lastly, we played out this game last year when we constantly updated the pitching FA targets during the season. Correia was among the best. The reality that fans don't want to hear is that rebuilds take time, rebuilding through FA is a bad idea, all teams go through these cycles and Ryan has demonstrated the ability to rebuild and keep those windows open longer than most GMs.

Probably. At this point, I think the Twins haven't earned the benefit of the doubt on these Cuban guys. But let's hope this one works out.

I don't think there's a lot out there on the FA front. McCarthy could be ok but ... kinda bland. Hughes, Gibson and Nolasco are locks for the rotation. I think Gibson has pitched well enough that we can expect some improvement and Nolasco can't be this bad but that leaves two spots. If Pelfrey is healthy, he gets one. May doesn't have much left to prove in AAA. I thought Milone would be better than he was with us. Meyer should be in the majors. I know that pitchers get hurt and they'll probably end up using 10 starters over the course of the year, but I don't really want another Pelfrey type blocking starts from May and Meyer. I'd rather they try and upgrade the OF defense instead. I've been advocating Rasmus for a while but maybe Ryan can pull off a trade to add a solid player to LF instead.