gunnarthor

The Twins changed their pitching philosophy to the draft when Smith took over. Deron Johnson drafted flame throwers and high school pitchers a lot more than Radcliff ever did - Bullock, Tootle, Hunt, Gutierrez, Stewart, Boer, Bard, Williams, etc. He stopped drafting the control guys that Radcliff aimed for. And so far, Gibson is the only Johnson pitcher drafted to make the majors. We can argue whether or not it was a good change in philosophy but I don't think it's fair to say the Twins are still drafting low risk guys.

It's a good point. I'm one that thinks it would be hard for a guy to switch to one way but I could be wrong. I hope Hicks and his hitting coaches at least discuss it. But I have no idea if Victorino is even remotely normal. I've read in the past that it's pretty hard for a switch hitter to go to one side. But maybe he and Florimon should.

People realize that AJ isn't really a good player anymore, right? He had a sub .300 on base percentage while playing for Texas. I like AJ, I think he'll be a great manager and hope it's with us. But as a player? I hope Mauer stays behind the plate.

Doesn't really fit. He's a lefty so he can't really platoon w/Mauer. Doesn't hit enough to be a 1B/DH. Also probably would rather play on a contending team than a rebuilding one.

I mentioned Morneau b/c Morneau was a very highly rated prospect who took a while to play well. Over his first 1000 AB he was a 98 OPS+ hitter amassed less than 2 WAR. In early 2006, fans were dumping on him. Some were hoping the Twins would trade him for Ty Wiggington and others thought that was too much to hope for. They are different types of players - Morneau, at his best, was a clear power hitter and that was his prospect status. Hicks would never hit that well but Hicks was always a good prospect, even when he had "bad" years, he was a better hitter than his league would suggest. Fangraphs wrote about the concern of a toolsy guy not developing as fast as people wanted and how it colors peoples views of him. Like Aaron Hicks, Buxton Will Require Patience | FanGraphs Baseball

I like Hicks a lot. He might be slow to develop but so was Morneau. A future outfield of Hicks/Buxton/Arcia could be freaking awesome. No sense in trading him now while his value is this low since he hasn't shown he can hit above AA. I think they should let him start in AAA and bring him up to after they trade Willingham and keep him up here from then on.

Polanco out slugged him, sure, but that was solely b/c of his higher batting avg. Harrison had the higher ISO power. Both are fun prospects to have. My guess is that Harrison's ceiling is still higher even if Polanco probably had the better year.

Fangraphs WAR is based on fip while baseball reference uses RA. It usually is fairly similar but there can be some pretty big differences - Fangraphs WAR has Jack Morris with more WAR (in fewer seasons) than Jim Palmer. bWAR has him less than Brad Radke. Tom Glavine is another, BR has him 10 WAR higher than fangraphs. Jim Kaat is a clear HOFer on fWAR (70 WAR) but 25 WAR lower on bWAR. I'm not sure why there can be some much variation on some pitchers. Radke has 45 WAR on both, for example. Santana is only a 3WAR difference. I've read (but not sure it's true) suggestions that fWAR gives too much credit to bad pitchers although both rated Blackburns 08-09 seasons basically the same. fWAR isn't as harsh on Blackburn's disastrous 2012. And I've also read that stat heads like fWAR more than bWAR. So who knows.

I expect he'll be back. I'd be ok with a 2 year deal or 1 + option. We had something like 8 pitchers make 10+ starts last year and 9 the year before. They'll need arms.

Ask BA: How Do The Braves Do It? - BaseballAmerica.com Interesting point from the article. "The Braves scout junior colleges as extensively and better than anyone. Righthander Kris Medlen, as well as Kimbrel and Simmons, are all juco products, as was Venters (who missed this season due to injury) and Tommy Hanson, who was a productive starter and then traded for Jordan Walden."

Good to see that. Obviously, small sample issues but it's nice to see his bat working against higher competition.

As to the original post, I don't know enough about any of the international signees to know whether or not we should go after them but I'b glad that we did and hope the scouting guys get it better than Nishi.

Nor should it.

The Span thing isn't quite true either, though. Over his last 3 seasons with us, Span was a .334 OBP (and 94 OPS+) and avg less than 2 WAR/season. Obviously, the Nats hoped that injuries were the main cause of that. But sometimes teams make trades based on what they hope to see, not what they see. But I agree that Perkins has the potential to bring back a difference making pitcher. I'd listen on Dozier and probably take a May/Worley type deal but not a Sean Gilmartin deal. And if other teams don't want to give that up, let him play second again. That's not a bad outcome for us either.

I wonder if the Twins would take Burdi again with their second pick. Johnson likes flame throwing relievers.

Fun read. Of the non-elites, I think Harrison could jump up a lot next year. I like him and the reports on his defense were better this year. Another season of improvement there and, hopefully, a few less strikeouts and he could turn into a real nice prospect to have. I'm still not convinced in Rosario but hopefully I'm wrong. Like May a lot more than Sickels. I think he'll be better in the majors but maybe it's just blind optimism. I like seeing Polanco in our top 10. Next year it'll be a lot of fun watching how the young pitchers - Stewart, Berrios, Eades, Thorpe, Jorge, Gonzalez - perform. There's some serious upside among them. Maybe we'll add that Texan HS pitcher in the draft.

And what should he have done?

Actually, our best starting pitchers over the last decade or so have been Santana, Radke, Milton and Baker. You could also argue that Silva or Mays were just as effective as Liriano. Liriano 7 seasons 50-52 4.33 era 98 ERA+, 783.1ip 9.8 WAR Silva 4 seasons 47-45 4.42 era 102 ERA+, 773.2ip 9.0 WAR Mays 6 seasons 48-65 4.85 era, 94 ERA+, 946ip 10.5 WAR

I did a quick look at the 10 years 98-07 drafts and the Twins totaled about 175 WAR or 17.5/per draft. I was going to do it for other teams but the problem is a lot of guys get drafted by two different orgs. I knew not to give the Twins credit for Malholm, Alonzo or Vargas but i wouldn't know that in the White Sox org, for instance. I'm also not sure how much WAR credit should we give? Do I use Kubel's career total of 4.8 or his Twins total of 4.6 (Kubel has not been good by WAR since he left us). The second problem is that WAR, in SSS, can be pretty bad. Guys who were up here for 10 days can have a -.8 career WAR. Anyhow, my guess is that, from 98-07, the Twins were more or less good. A different way of looking at it would be by WAR to pick comparison. For example, the 05 draft the Twins picked 25th so you'd expect that the person they picked wouldn't be as good as most of those picked ahead. Garza's WAR total would be good enough to be re-picked at #10. Not sure how it'd work the other way. Adam Johnson was picked #2 in a pretty ****ty draft group. His -1.1 WAR is 18th "best" of that first round. (#2 is Adrian Gonzalez who was actual drafted #1 but Chase Utley was the steal of that draft, at #15).

Not sure the 2008-2012 drafts would be ideal. First, Ryan/Radcliff's last draft was 2007. Smith/Johnson ran 2008-2011 and Ryan/Radcliff/Johnson came back in 2012-13. But it's also not a lot of time for players - esp HS kids - to make the majors (or any impact). The Twins 2012 draft looks fantastic right now and Hicks (08) is just now making it to the majors.

I'm not really sure that's true, or at least it's true of many other orgs. Clearly, they traded Span and Revere at a good time last year. I know some people think "they should have traded JD Durbin when his stock was high" but I think all teams have that problem. Atlanta should've traded Hanson before his arm fell off. Angels should have traded Wood before he came to the majors. I think, generally, Terry Ryan has done a decent job of trading players for higher value than you'd have generally guessed. Sometimes it's awesome - AJ trade - sometimes it's just getting something for a simple asset - Butera trade, Liriano trade, Morneau trade. One semi valid complaint I've read is that Ryan won't make the "win-now" trade to put the team over the top. I'm not 100% sure that's a valid complaint since those Twins teams had payroll issues and in 2006 the Nats turned down Baker, Slowey + prospect for a two month rental of Soriano. Smith was clearly willing to do those types of trades.

I somehow didn't see your post when I posted mine.

I apologize for not being able to link this b/c I don't remember where it was. Probably a BA chat. But the author guessed that Thorpe, if he was an American high school student, would be a late first round pick to follow for the upcoming draft (meaning he could move up the boards if he had a good senior season). I think if the scouting reports on him change - ie, his fastball really is sitting 95, increased improvement of secondary pitches, a year from now he'll have put himself in position to be on the 2015 prospect list even if he's still only in rookie ball in 2014.

I don't think we should just give him away. But if they can upgrade pitching by bringing in a guy like Alex Wood (and I don't think Atlanta would do that) it makes sense with Rosario starting at AAA next year. But if the best we can get for him is an unproven #5 starter, then we should keep him.

Looking at the Cards drafts since 2000, a few things pop out. First, they've had a ton of first round picks. 27 which is the same # as the Twins. However, not many real difference makers (at least not yet) outside of Mauer. Twins drafted high in 2000, 2001 and the last two years but in between they had pretty comparable draft spots. Of those 54 combined picks (which isn't completely fair since some of those picks are still in the minors, some didn't sign, but ignore that for now), Only 6 players managed even 5 WAR so far. And only 3 really made it with their team - Mauer, Perkins and Span. The other three - Garza, Barton and Rasmus were traded away. Obviously, Mauer at the top of the draft is the best guy. Second round picks are even more interesting. Cards had two guys with 5+ WAR (Dan Haren and John Jay), Twins had three (Slowey, Baker, Crain). But the Cards actually really missed out - they traded both Haren and Barton for two seasons of Mark Mulder (who re-signed later but only had one good season in total with the Cards). Third round neither team has a guy meet the 5 WAR cut off but Duensing is the closest Twin (4.8) and Kelly (3.4) is the closest Card. (If we went back to 1999, Morneau was chosen). Fourth round Cards nabbed Molina, Eddie Rosario might be the Twins best pick in that period. Fifth round nothing much. Skip Schumaker is the best player. But it's a lot of meh. Sixth to tenth. Cards found both Brandan Ryan and Allen Craig who have combined for about 23 WAR. Twins drafted Neshek, Dozier and Adam Lind (combined about 14 WAR) in those rounds. The Twins picks in the first few rounds have been better (if we went back to 1999, we could count Pujols in the 13th round). I didn't look into picks that were later traded (like Bullock for Diamond) since that seemed like a lot of work but the drafts themselves don't look too one-sided either way.