gunnarthor
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Everything posted by gunnarthor
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You didn't give facts, you used certain stats out of context to reach a predetermined conclusion. Huge difference.
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I think Toussaint could be a really intriguing and brave pick. mlbpipeline ranked him #16 but likes his upside - he could have two plus pitches. "Toussaint, who spent most of the first six years of his life in Haiti, has one of the quickest and loosest arms in the 2014 high school class. He's still learning to control his pitches but could have a pair of well above-average offerings once he does. Toussaint usually operates at 91-93 mph with his fastball and has shown the ability to reach 97. His mid-70s curveball has so much downward break that his catchers have trouble holding onto it. He also shows the willingness to use a changeup, though he currently throws his too hard in the mid-80s. While he doesn't repeat his delivery consistently at this point, his athleticism bodes well for his future." If the Twins had a few earlier picks like Miami does (3 in the 30-40 range), I think I'd be really excited at drafting Touki and saving a little money for those extra picks. But we don't so it might be a bit of a reach at #5. That said, 10 years from now, he could be the best pitcher out of this draft.
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Yep, absolutely correct. I'm not sold on Gordon but I'm not concerned about whether he sticks at short. I think I'd still rather add an arm or Jackson but it's looking less likely.
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There's a lot wrong with this which makes it hard to get a handle on. First, using one rate stat without context tells us nothing. For instance, Lohse played 6 of his 14 seasons with us but two of them were half seasons (rookie year and traded year). 3 of his other 4 seasons are among his 6 best seasons by WAR. Neshek's era looks nice in Oakland but by WAR, his best seasons were in MN and it wasn't particularly close. A lot of pitchers got too rich for the Twins and left, either as FA or by trade before hand. Most of them had their best days in MN - Silva, Santana, Milton, Reyes, Nathan, Guerrier, Hawkins, Everyday Eddie, Romero, Baker. The Twins had a number of pitchers pitch better once they got here - Pavano, Silva, Nathan, Guerrier, Fein, Burton, Reyes, Correia. And then of course there was Slowey, who got cut b/c he was too smart for the Twins. And he sucked in Miami. I think only a few pitchers can arguably be said to pitch better after they left but it's not absolute. Garza was going to be a good pitcher and we traded him away. Lohse, as mentioned, happened to have some pretty good seasons with us before embarking on a long career. And Liriano had one good year in Pit but is back to his old tricks again. Maybe a few others - Balfour certainly but he was an injury cut.
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Pretty sure the first part is not true.
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I'd be happy with Cuddyer like offense and avg or better corner defense - something like a .281/.350/.471 117 OPS+ avg (Cuddy's numbers since 06 and also very close to Wil Myers career offensive numbers to date). That would probably avg out to a 3 WAR player with a better peak. If the defense is bad, I'd want something closer to a healthy Milton Bradley run - .289/.389/.474 127 OPS+ to fix that defensive hole.
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How is Ray Searage making a difference, or, more to the point, how do we know he is making a difference that Anderson hasn't made? This is Searage's 4th season as pitching coach and he's had one year where his staff was top 5 by ERA+. That was last year and this year the staff is a mess with most pitchers having taken a step back. Every other season they finished in the bottom half.
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I think the goalposts keep getting moved here. If the question is only "What prospects have come up the last three years and have become good ML starters"** then the answer is none and Anderson must be bad at his job. But if the question is "What success have pitchers had since they've been coached by Anderson" the answer gets a lot harder. These pitchers have all had at least one 2 WAR season under Anderson - Santana, Radke, Baker, Slowey, Blackburn, Duensing, Swarzak, Silva, Lohse, Reed, Hawkins, Milton, Romero, Rincon, Nathan, Reyes, Guerrier, Mijares, Pavano, Liriano, Perkins, Diamond. Not many were ever on a top 100 prospect list. Now some of those - Pavano - were good vets before they got here and some were starters before Anderson got his job but they seemed to do ok under him. And they won two cy young awards, a comeback player award and over 10 all-star games. So, absent knowing anything about pitching, I tend to think that guys tend to overperform under Anderson more than underperform. ** I know we hadn't yet gotten it down to 3 years but I'd reply something about the 09-10 teams being playoff teams based around pitching - Liriano, Baker and a fixed Pavano and then we'd cut those years off.
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Pavano. Deduno. Correa had his best season last year. Fein and Burton both revitalized their careers here. Liriano had his best season in that time frame (and arguably his worst). Ditto for Baker and Blackburn in that time frame. I'm not sure how many people thought Duensing would have this good of a career when he came up in 09. Which is part of the problem with grading coaches. That Duensing has been basically a 100 ERA+, 1 WAR/season relief pitcher a positive or a negative on Anderson? Nobody is denying that the team has been bad since 2011 but is our pitching bad b/c Anderson can't get better results from De Vries, Hendriks, Albers or have they been bad b/c the team is starting De Vries, Hendriks and Albers? I tend to think that, over the course of his time with the Twins, the Twins have had more pitchers over perform expectations than under perform. Joe Mays led the AL in ERA+ once. Milton was an all star. Silva got nearly 50m in free agency when he left us. Blackburn managed two 2 WAR seasons. Reyes, Guerrier, Fein, Burton were all good reclamation projects. Baker was never a bigtime prospect but had a decent little career. Everyday Eddie, Nathan and Perkins all became all-star type closers under Anderson without having previous closing experience (which bucked the trend). But I tend to think it's more talent than coaching but a coach might be able to help certain types of players more than others. I don't know.
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Some of that stuff makes some sense - Gordon going below slot at #2 b/c Maimi is cheap and has 3 other picks in the 30-40 range. Cubs have been linked to Beede before. Man, I'd love it if Kolek fell to us.
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I tend to think coaches are overrated both ways. Give Anderson a good group of pitchers and the Twins will end up pretty good. From 02-08, the Twins finished top 5 or better every year in ERA+ (leading once and finishing second twice) except one and from 02-10 they were better than league avg every year. They've been below league avg from 11-13 (and will probably finish below it again this year). Obviously, having pitching staffs fronted by Santana and Radke helps a lot but the team got some pretty nice years out of guys like Lohse, Silva, Danny Reyes, Matt Guerrier, Rincon, Slowey, Baker, Everyday Eddie etc. Not all of those guys were considered good but several left the Twins for big money deals and played worse after they left. Does a guy like Anderson help a guy like Deduno or help Perkins transition to the pen? I'm not sure. Is he hurting Gibson? I'm not sure. I do think that coaches have a small overall effect but that some coaches can have huge impact on individual players (Jim Thome credits Charlie Manual for teaching him a timing sequence that let his power play up would probably be one extreme end of that). Maybe Anderson's "pitch to contact" stuff got in Liriano's head (although Liriano is back to his old tricks this year so I doubt it). The future of the Twins pitching is Hughes, Gibson, May, Meyer, Perkins and Nolasco. I don't really think Anderson's fate should be tied to guys like Scott Diamond or Liam Hendriks or Cole De Vries. When given decent talent, I tend to think they've been a bit better than expected.
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I think low 72-90ish sounds about right. Going into the season I thought that the record wasn't as important as the development of several players. So far Dozier, Hughes, Pinto, Perkins and Mauer (and Nolasco lately) look more or less ok as future parts. Hicks and Florimon have been horrible. Arcia, Gibson, Meyer, May, Polanco, Buxton and Sano are all somewhere in between. Willingham's injury is killing any trade value he might have had. I was also hoping that the Twins would get a positive longterm surprise or two - Danny Santana might be one. Trevor May might be one.
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Found: film of 1919 Black Sox World Series
gunnarthor replied to Twins Daily Admin's topic in Other Baseball
My belief on Shoeless Joe is that he took the money and helped throw the series. But it was fairly common at that time to do things like that and many, many players had done things like that - Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were both dragged into one of those and actually retired from baseball before coming back. Christy Mathewson's great 1905 WS might not have been on the level. So I do think the players in Chicago got screwed a bit. (And the owners were worse). But baseball did have to do something about the fix scheme and you have to admit it worked. Football, tennis, soccer and basketball have all had fix scandels/accusations/bad smells to them over the years but baseball has remained fairly clean in that regard. -
Obviously, no Twin will be voted in but I think Dozier will be our lone representative. I guess if the AL manager wants a deep bullpen, you could see Perkins going instead but I think Dozier will be the better story.
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Found: film of 1919 Black Sox World Series
gunnarthor replied to Twins Daily Admin's topic in Other Baseball
Shoeless Joe's main guilt was throwing the world series. Posnanski wrote about him pretty recently: "Jackson, in his Grand Jury testimony, admitted taking the money, admitted that he agreed to help throw the series, though he said that in the end he played it straight. He later said that admission was coerced and that he had never agreed to play less than his best and had only taken the money because they gave it to him. Numerous details were different in the two tellings. Jackson did hit .375 in the Series with a then-record 12 hits, which suggests he might have been telling the truth about playing it straight. However a closer look shows he hit poorly and fielded sluggishly when in important positions, which suggests he might have been lying. People will argue about it forever." -
Here's the link - http://www.baseballamerica.com/college/2014-mock-draft-track-record-lands-rodon-atop-first-mock/ I have to say - with the knowledge that I don't know anything - that I'd prefer an offensive first player like Jackson over a HS shortstop. Heck, I'd be ok with them taking an injured Hoffman or even a college pitcher like Nola or Freeland ahead of Gordon. Which explains why I shouldn't be a scouting director.
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Who are the hurt first round talents or HS kids claiming they want to go to college? Hoffman, Fischer, Bukauskas. Probably a few more.
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It's probably just semantics. When I say "foundation types" I'm thinking of guys that will be true aces or MVP type players, big middle of the order bats etc. Santana, Mauer, Morneau when he was healthy. I think Sano, Buxton and Meyer can be those type of players. Complementary pieces are guys like Hunter, Cuddy, Baker, Radke - all of whom were very important but not quite at the other guys levels although maybe in a career year they could be.
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I guess I'll echo the other thoughts. He might now be a top 20ish Twins prospect which is a big improvement from where he was but he's not a top prospect. It looks like he's only playing second base now but, and I don't have a lot of defensive stats, it looks like he's playing it well enough to be good there defensively. Let's hope it continues.
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I'm not sure if it's bottom heavy. If you consider the top 20 prospects by mlb.com in AA/AAA/MLB we have Sano (DL for the year), Meyer, May, Santana, Vargas and Pinto and Buxton and Rosario should've been there if not for injuries/drug use. In A+/A they have Stewart, Berrios, Polanco, Jorge, Harrison, Walker, Kepler, Vargas, and Eades, In rookie ball they have Gonzalez, Thorpe, Romero and Bard (DL). That seems to be a pretty decent spread of talent, esp when you see some pretty nice quality in the upper minors including three foundation type talents in Sano, Buxton and Meyer.
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Last year they graduated three top 100 prospects in Arcia, Gibson and Hicks. In 2012 they graduated Dozier. This year they've already graduated Pinto. Admittedly, all five are complementary pieces and not foundation pieces but that's a pretty solid list. This year they are also likely to add two pitchers - May and Meyer - who should be part of the future rotations.
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Dang. Yeah, I'd be ok with taking him in the second round but it probably won't happen. Gioltio fell from a top 5 pick to 13. I don't think Hoffman will fall all the way to the second round. So Aiken, Rodon and Kolek are all pretty much locks to go in the top 4. Gordon, Jackson, Nola, Beede ... I wanted Jackson and still do.
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With the caveat that the top 5 are arguably interchangeable, he ranks the Twins #1. 1) Minnesota Twins: This system has everything you want: high-end impact talent like Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano, and Alex Meyer, plus considerable depth backing them up and other prospects who could break through as big names in the next year (Kohl Stewart, Lewis Thorpe). There’s pitching and hitting and just a good general balance of tools, upside, and polish. He likes KC, too but Det, Clev and Chi are in the bottom 10.
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MLB is pretty bad. Yesterday I was trying to find video of William Ligue rushing the field but it's all gone.
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I liked the show but I didn't quite love it as much as others. Good acting though.