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gunnarthor

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Everything posted by gunnarthor

  1. gunnarthor
    I suspect that, had the Twins lost 6 series like that, and had the better record than their opponent in each one (and several with home field advantage), you might not be this open minded about bad luck. Heck, two of those teams won more than 100 games and two of their opponents won fewer than 90. Yet Oakland could never beat teams with worse records in the playoffs. Oakland avg 97 wins against 92 for their opponents in the post season (for comparison, the Twins avg 92 wins against 100 for theirs).
  2. gunnarthor
    Interesting point on Oakland - since 2000, they are 1-7 in playoff series with their one win coming against us in 06. (And the Twins one win was against them). They just set the ML record for losing 6 straight winner moves on games and every one of those 6 series, the A's had the better regular season record (twice they had over 100 wins and twice their opponents had 88 or fewer wins). That's gotta hurt.
  3. gunnarthor
    Yeah, have fun. Count how many scouts are there vs fans.
  4. gunnarthor
    Harrison is a nice sleeper prospect, I like him, but he doesn't really have value right now. If he was on another team, he'd be the add on a rebuilding team would like to sneak in but he can't headline a real trade at this point. Beachy had TJ surgery and then got hurt again. I don't think Atlanta would want to trade him while his value was that low. Perkins is obviously the other trade chip the FO has, if it wants to cash it. Other teams that could use an upgrade at second (just using fWAR as a quick and dirty value system) and might be going for it next year would be Toronto, A's, Nats and Royals. Nats might be committed to Rendon at second.
  5. gunnarthor
    I like the idea of Dozier to Atlanta but I'd aim higher than Gilmartin, whose upside is a good Nick Blackburn. Probably aim for Wood (might be a reliever), Sims (A ball) or maybe Cody Martin (numbers better than his stuff) and go from there. But it looks like the two sides could easily make some kind of trade and have done so before (Diamond/Bullock).
  6. gunnarthor
    Seriously though, no one thinks Molina's a roider? I'm the only one? More seriously, I think the Cards have probably been the best run org for some time now. They've had some nice stability in the FO and management for some time, the org knows who it is, they've used payroll pretty well to add nice pieces. I don't think they're the little team that could - they had nice payrolls and their fans were actually upset it didn't increase at times - but even teams with better payrolls haven't done as well as them. I've always been a bit dismissive of NL teams but we'll ignore that for now.
  7. gunnarthor
    I always thought Molina was using something. Was I the only one?
  8. gunnarthor
    I honestly don't understand where you are coming from. Starting Hicks does improve the team in the long run. He needs that experience. Trading Span and Revere away improves the club in the long run. The starting pitching market was horrific and Correia ended up being one of the few good signings. One of the big problems I have with people ripping on Ryan this year is that no one can suggest a realistic better solution than to do what they are doing.
  9. gunnarthor
    Actually, Willingham had only 10 fewer walks in about 35 fewer games this year. His iso on-base % was higher this year. I don't think he'll be the 2012 Willingham again but he could easily club like it was 2011 and that would be a valuable trade piece next season.
  10. gunnarthor
    How telling are the stats? The six playoff seasons, the Twins avg 92 wins and had a 213-203 record against the AL East and West (avg of +2 per season). This years Tigers won 93 games while going 34-32 against the AL east and west. Cleveland won 92 this year and went 37-29 against the east/west. Teams interdivison games matter more. The 2011 Rays won 91 games and were a +2 against the central and west. The 2010 Rangers were +1 against the central and east.
  11. gunnarthor
    As mentioned before, the Twins played 4 teams that won over 100 games. In fact, the 06 A's and the 10 Yanks were the only team that didn't win at least 99 games (the 06 Twins being the only team that won more than 94). The avg Twins record in those 5 years was 92 wins. Their opponents avg 100 wins/season. Their best teams also had the happy coincidence of being unhealthy while playing teams stacked with known PED users. Not sure why it's surprising that they lost. Or why it should be used to devalue how good those teams were.
  12. gunnarthor
    This post is exactly right. Willingham can easily improve his trade value by having a few healthy months to start the season and he isn't blocking anyone. Trading now would be a mistake. Frankly, the only two Twins that have strong trade value right now would be Perkins and possibly Dozier. (Burton and Fein might have some ok value as well). I'd much rather Ryan works the phones to see what he can get for Perkins this offseason.
  13. gunnarthor
    A lot to go over but I'll just point out that this is exactly what Ryan has done before. He rebuilt the 2002-2004 playoff Twins into the 2006 squad on the fly while changing key components. The 2+ WAR players on 2004 were Santana, Radke, Silva, Nathan, Ford, Koskie, Rincon and Hunter. The 06 squad was built around Santana Liriano, Nathan, Mauer, Morneau, Punto, Bartlett, Cuddyer, Castillo, Reyes and Hunter. The team Ryan took over wasn't possible to make a quick fix out of. The failures of this years team was mostly because veterans like Morneau, Willingham, Plouffe, Doumit and even Mauer a bit either failed to hit, got hurt or both. If you think there was a quick fix to last years team, feel free to tell us what it was. But signing Dempster, Edwin Jackson and/or Brandon McCarthy wasn't it.
  14. gunnarthor
    First, the Red Sox would never have given up top prospects and taken on Mauer's salary. That's just false. Secondly, I think one could very reasonably argue that Ryan traded Knoblauch, AJ, Aggie, Span, Revere, Buchanan, Romero, Milton, Hollins etc at pretty high points.
  15. gunnarthor
    I like the idea but I agree that the Reds would want more "win now" pieces than prospects. Ryan tried to trade for Cueto a few years ago but couldn't get it done so at least we know Ryan will look at the Reds. If they do want to move Chapman to the pen, I think Perkins would be a real nice piece for them and, if he was healthy, Willingham would be what they need in LF. Unfortunately, they have Phillips signed long term at second so, unless they somehow moved him (unlikely) Dozier isn't a fit. I guess wait and see who their new manager is, how he wants to use Chapman and then try and make some sort of package around Perkins. I'd do Perkins, Willingham and a solid prospect but I don't think Willingham has the value right now to push a trade.
  16. gunnarthor
    It's not a big mystery why the Twins crashed and burned. Morneau's career was dramatically changed by injury. Span, Nathan and Mauer less so. Baker got hurt. Young and Liriano failed to develop off of strong 2010 seasons. Cuddy got old. Garza and Ramos were traded away in win now trades and draft picks either took longer than expected time to develop, either b/c of injuries or slow progress (Wimmers, Gibson, Hicks) or didn't develop (Plouffe/Parm). Nishi sorta sucked. A bunch of other players just got old. There's nothing surprising about this. Reusse predicted it before it happened. Teams get old and if they also get hurt, they collapse. Sure, not every team loses 96 games when it happens but sometimes they also have outside factors (such as another 100 loss team in their division or surprising health) that help them. I don't really care about how many losses a team has (so long as it isn't quite ridiculous) in a season but how many seasons will it take them to turn it around. I'd rather the Twins lose 96 4x and start winning then going through a 9 year death march like the Reds did.
  17. gunnarthor
    Kelly had one more winning season at the end of his career. But yeah, your point is right.
  18. gunnarthor
    Frankly, one could make a reasonable argument that the Twins took the best pitcher last year and not the best player. I think the Twins legitimately had Stewart ahead of Frazier and the other HS GA bat but some reputable sources - BA, Mayo - had at least Frazier ahead of Stewart.
  19. gunnarthor
    Ignoring a lot of other stuff, I'm not sure how you determined the Twins were similar in payroll potential to the Giants. The Giants have usually been a top 10 payroll team. In 2010, the teams within 5m to the Twins in salary were the White Sox, Dodgers (but ownership was stealing their money), Mets (Ponzi scheme), Cubs and Brewers. 2011, our most expensive team was still 6m lower than #8 team - the Giants. And people still claim we can have a 110m or so payroll, which, this year, would put us 30m behind SF and close to teams like the Reds and Nats in 13th place. And the Reds have managed 8 winning seasons in the last 20 and the Nats are even worse.
  20. gunnarthor
    The weighted schedule is over stated. Rob Neyer ran something on ESPN a few years ago and concluded that, at best, it was a 1 game swing. I also think it's fair to say that if the Twins were in the AL East or West, they'd have created a different type of team to compete against their division opponents. And divisions didn't always run equal. The 2002 AL West was pretty loaded. A 100+ win team and two more that won 93. Twins naturally had a winning record against them (and beat the 100+ team in the playoffs). I think the last point is why is this only brought up when it's the Twins? Since 2000, the Tigers, Cubs, Cards, Padres, Phillies, White Sox, Dodgers, Braves and Yankees have all won their division with less than 90 wins. Some multiple times. That the Twins were able to win as much as they did, esp with a loaded White Sox team in the division, with their salary limitations, was quite impressive. There's no need to dismiss those years as a way to diminish Ryan now.
  21. gunnarthor
    I believe Hudson is retiring. I think the Twins have already been linked to Hughes and I'm sure they'll kick the tires on Santana. In the last two years, they've had 8-9 starters/year make 10 or more starts so they'll need to add a few. Sano won't be here on opening day, Twins get an extra year of control and save $$ if he stays down in AAA for a bit. Corey Hart is a very interesting bat to add to the mix. His defense would be ugly but I think he'd be a solid fit on a short term - 3 year - deal.
  22. gunnarthor
    But it's fresh fish.
  23. gunnarthor
    Good link. Agree with what you said, although Parmelee might not get another chance. As to sleepers, has anyone seen any current scouting reports on guys like Thorpe or Jorge? Not game logs, but scout's analysis. One thing I could see happening this off season is Ryan exploring trades of Perkins and Dozier/Rosario. Not sure if it'll happen but I think he makes at least one semi-large trade.
  24. gunnarthor
    Not really sure how comparable the Giants and Cards are. They had huge financial advantages over the Twins in that period of time. Only really in the last few seasons have the Twins been at a similar (although generally smaller) levels. Twins and A's have both managed 9 seasons above .500 in the last 20 years. Twins finished dead last 4x, Oakland 5x. I guess you can say Oakland's worst seasons weren't as bad, record-wise, as the Twins.
  25. gunnarthor
    Agree with Beede. Hopefully, next year's top prospects stay on target and a few more come up as surprises. I'd much rather have a deep draft than a top 3 like we did last year (although Stewart was a nice consolation prize).
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