John Bonnes

Hot Stove League Banquet It ain't fancy. It is fun. If you're looking to get together for a lot of irreverent and fun Twins talk, I'd invite you to attend the 4th Annual LAST Hot Stove League Banquet and Charity Auction next Friday night. It's not the fourth annual - it's the fourth annual LAST, because this has been going on for decades now and they keep trying to stop doing it. Just click on the image below for more information. [ATTACH=CONFIG]65[/ATTACH] You'll likely see both The Voice of Reason and I there and we'll probably be taking the party someplace else immediately afterwards. I hope you can make it.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]61[/ATTACH] So far, the Twins have invested $99M in their 2012 team. Whether you think they'll be competitive or not isn't the point. (I do.) Whether you think they should have cut payroll or not isn’t the point. (I don't.) The point is this: the Twins have invested $99M in their 2012 team. Now they need to spend a tiny fraction of that to insure it. You would think that would be obvious to the Twins, who have traditionally been a risk-adverse organization, especially under Terry Ryan. They demonstrated that again this offseason. They could've waited to sign their free agents, gambling that the market would go down and they wouldn't be left without competent players. Instead, they reversed course from the last few seasons, aggressively signing almost their entire roster before Christmas. But they also have a tradition of being extremely tied to a budget, and it appears they've hit it. But to stop now, when the free agent market is so affordable and they still have two enormous risks on the roster would be the definition of pennywise and pound-foolish. They created the first of these risks earlier this week when they signed Joel Zumaya to a super affordble one-year deal, heavy with incentives. The contract is awesome. Zumaya's health history isn't. Zumaya has failed to stay healthy for the last five consecutive seasons. The question isn't if he'll stay healthy. The question is when he'll break. When he does, the Twins are right back where they were a week ago - without a dependable right-handed arm in their bullpen other than Matt Capps. (Let's let the irony of that last sentence settle in for minute.) Zumaya has the potential to be a great signing or a dubious choice depending entirely on whether the Twins go out and sign someone else. There are a half-dozen competent right-handed relievers on the market, all of whom are likely to cost between one and two million dollars. That's how much it would take to transform the bullpen from “mess” to “average with upside.” The second risk was made clear last week on the MLB Network in an interview with Justin Morneau. "Most days, I wake up I feel pretty good. Usually after I get done, really exert myself, really working out hard after a long day, your brain gets tired and everything gets so worn down. It's not functioning the way it's supposed to be, and you kind of get done with the day and you go, 'Something's not right.' And you end up going home and taking a nap for a couple hours or whatever it is, and you wake up and the headache's still there and you kind of grind through it. But it's been a lot better lately.” “A lot better.” That’s an in interesting phrase. Not “good” or “fine.” Just “better.” Last year the Twins had a backup plan for Morneau: Jim Thome. He wouldn't play first, but manager Ron Gardenhire could move around the lineup and have Thome play designated hitter. He can do the same this year, except that the bats he is going to turn to are Trevor Plouffe and Luke Hughes. Meanwhile, one of the stories of the free agent market is how many designated hitter are looking for work. Vladamir Guerrero, Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon, Raul Ibanez, Magglio Ordonez and even Carlos Guillen are available and several of them are going to be available for about the same amount the Twins paid Thome. For $2-4 million, the Twins could pick up two key insurance policies on their #5 hitter and their bullpen. To not do so, to instead roll the dice on two critical areas that already look dubious, is foolhardy. ~~~ If you haven't taken advantage of the special pre-order price for Seth Stoh's Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook, time is running out. This isn't an e-book, you can throw this on your bookcase, bring it to games, give it to the Twins fan in your life. Grab it quick to help retain your sanity during these cold snaps. You can order it HERE.

Does Revere's Defense Make Up For Delmon's Offense? Last week in a thought exercise, I wondered if who we could expect more out of this year – Delmon Young or Ben Revere. One offensive, one defensive. One defensively laughable, one offensively infuriating. So let’s look, sabrmetrically, at what each should be worth offensively and defensively next year. [ATTACH=CONFIG]48[/ATTACH] Offense I like using a very basic sabremetric stat to measure offensive production for players: Bill James’ Runs Created (or RC). Basically James discovered that by looking at the number of walks, hits, doubles, triples, homeruns and at-bat a team had, he could give a pretty good estimate of how many runs they scored that year. Then he used that same formula for players. (If you’re looking for more on Runs Created, I did a short story on it back in April you might want to check out. That theory is that basis for a huge chunk of the sabremetric work out there. It also started the alphabet statistical soup that people like to mock. If you want to be able to explain the basics of this stuff to people, it’s a good start.) Runs Created has been through all kinds of formulas and there are all kinds of pet derivations for it. I’m going to just pull mine from ESPN.com for both players. Delmon Young created 51 runs last year, 89 the year before and 76 &45 in his first two years with the Twins. My gawd, was he really here four years? I guess time flies when you’re flailing at first pitches. He’s probably good for somewhere between 50 and 90 runs, so I’ll go with 70 as a nice round figure. Revere played in 117 games with 481 plate appearances and created 46 runs. It’s not safe to assume he’ll be playing full time this year, but just so we can compare apples to apples, let’s assume he gets another 90 AB. That would give him about 55 runs of offense, about 15 less than Delmon. Defense The most widely used defensive metric, Ultimate Zone Rating (or UZR) also uses runs as its measuring stick, though this time it is runs in comparison to the average defender. We’ll take that number and add it to (or subtract it from) our offensive runs. We’ll get those numbers from FanGraphs.com. Young has been bad defensively, but did you know that according to UZR he has really improved over the last two years? Last year he only cost the Twins three runs compared to the average left fielder, seven runs better than 2010 and 11 runs better than the year before that. My guess is that Young costs between 0 and -15 runs, and so I’ll got with -5. Overall that leaves him with 65 runs. Revere is also a little hard to measure. His UZR in left field was also negative, but he only played there for a few games, so it’s hard to count on UZR. However, in center field he saved 10 runs, and that translates to 15 runs if he had played there full time. Generally, you would see that number go up in left field, just because the average left fielder is worse defensively than the average center fielder. So 15 runs seems safe, and it could be as high as 20. Let’s stay with 15. And the cry goes up: But WHAT ABOUT HIS ARM? Well UZR takes an outfielder's arm into account. So for now, let's go with it. Parenthentically, it should be a fascinating year for Twins fans as they watch a thought experiment play itself out in reality. Enormous range. No arm. Which is more important to an outfielder? I think it’s going to be “range” in a landslide, but I wonder if I’ll feel the same way after this year. That gives Revere 70 runs and Delmon 65. I wouldn’t take it as definitive proof that Revere is going to be more valuable than Young, but they’re a lot more comparable than I would have thought.

[attachment=7175:3699.attach]Aaron and John review a plethora of weird roster moves, wonder about the impact of Joe Mauer's bat, discuss pineapple sauce with [URL="https://twitter.com/LindsayGuentzel"]Lindsay Guentzel[/URL], endorse Eduardo Escobar, compare John's facial hair to Jack Morris' and interview Aaron's favorite bartender at Stella's. You can listen by downloading us from [URL="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gleeman-geek-minnesota-twins/id457946327"]iTunes[/URL], [URL="http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=41069&refid=stpr"]Stitcher[/URL] or find it at [URL="http://gleemanandthegeek.com/"]GleemanAndTheGeek.com[/URL]. View full article