John Bonnes

MASN is reporting the Twins have approached the Orioles about trading them Justin Morneau. http://www.masnsports.com/school_of_roch/2012/12/twins-have-contacted-the-orioles-about-morneau.html I think there already some threads talking specifcally about a trade with the Orioles, but this makes me wonder a couple of things... 1. What would you be willing to give up Morneau for? Both if the Twins ate some salary or if they ate none of it... 2. Is this yet another indication that Ryan is willing to tread water in 2013 and look towards the future?

Here's he link: I don't think this is a terrible idea, if they think they can get some decent pitching back. Hicks could be ready sooner rather than later and thy can use a placeholder in he meantime - even Mastroianni.

Given the escalated salaries for starting pitchers, how high would you be willing to go for Brandon McCarthy? He's been very good when healthy, but also has only thrown 111 and 170 innings the last two years. He was out all of 2010. So there is plenty of gamble there. Would you be willing to go three years? Would you be willing to go up to $10M/year? $11M? Think of this as a blind bid situation. If you get the biggest total number, you get him. What would you be willing to do? (I think I top out at 2/22 or 3/30.)

When he was available for a trade for almost nothing at 1 year/$12M a month ago, we wondered if 29 teams (including the Twins) would regret not making that deal. Looks like it that was true. As I wrote this morning, this further drives home that #2 pitchers are going for $12-15M/year this offseason. If Haren is getting that, then I have to think they'll all be getting that. McCarthy can't go going for much less than $10M annually now, can he?

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?1219-Rock-Versus-Hard-Place

One of the more interesting times in every offseason is when the rhetoric goes away and the choices become, often painfully, clear. Rock, meet Hard Place. The Hard Place is where the Twins are: fronting a rotation with Scott Diamond next year. Diamond, by Twins general manager Terry Ryan’s own analysis, is a #3 starter. He’s clearly scouring the winter meetings for upgrades. But like Charlie Brown at Halloween, all he’s getting is a whole lot of Rock. Here are the available pitchers who could be considered an upgrade over Scott Diamond. (FYI – These guys are all profiled in the TwinsCentric Offseason Handbook.) Tell me which one you think the Twins should go after. Zack Greinke – Will likely get a nine-figure deal over at least six years. Jake Peavy – Re-signed with the White Sox for 2 years at $29M with a vesting option for a 3rd year. Hiroki Kuroda – Re-signed with the Yankees for 1-year/$15M. Dan Haren – Available. He’s getting “getting interest from lotsa East-coast clubs.” James Shields – Only available via trade, and probably not to the Twins after they traded away Denard Span. Edwin Jackson – Available. Most recently rumored to be courted by the Angels. Anibal Sanchez – Reportedly called a 4-year/$48 million offer from the Tigers a few weeks ago “insulting.” Says he is seeking a 6-year/$90M offer. RA Dickey – Available via trade from the Mets. The price for him is “very high.” Brandon McCarthy – Still available. However, several teams have expressed an interest in him including “the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Cubs, the Royals, the Diamondbacks and the Twins – and the Angels and Rangers are also expected to join in.” Ryan Dempster – The 35-year-old has been linked with the Twins, Diamondbacks and Brewers and is searching for a 3-year deal, likely for around $13M per year. Kyle Lohse – Represented by Scott Boras. ‘Nuff said. If you’re looking for some trends to take from this, it appears that each of these guys (with the possible exception of Haren or maybe McCarthy) is pushing for (and probably likely to get) $13-$15M per year. Also, each is looking for a deal at least one year longer than any fiscally sane club would want to give them. This is the “interesting” time, or, if you prefer, “hellish.” It’s looking more and more like teams are going to need to pay to play. We can look at a 5-year/$65M deal for Jackson or a 3-year/$33 million deal for McCarthy and say that’s “crazy,” and we’re probably right. But we can’t do that and then rip Ryan for not upgrading the rotation, or settling for names like Brett Myers, Kevin Correia, Joe Blanton or John Lannan. This is the way free agency works. The vast majority are overpaid. It is the nature of the system. When a player signs with the one team that offers him the most money, instead of the 29 that don’t, odds are that player is overpaid. We can rip the Twins for putting themselves into this position – this is why minor league development is so important – but that ship has sailed. If we want to focus on the problem at hand, the choices seem to be overpay or settle. Rock or Hard Place. Which way are you going to go?

One of the more interesting times in every offseason is when the rhetoric goes away and the choices become, often painfully, clear. Rock, meet Hard Place. The Hard Place is where the Twins are: fronting a rotation with Scott Diamond next year. Diamond, by Twins general manager Terry Ryan’s own analysis, is a #3 starter. He’s clearly scouring the winter meetings for upgrades. But like Charlie Brown at Halloween, all he’s getting is a whole lot of Rock. Here are the available pitchers who could be considered an upgrade over Scott Diamond. (FYI – These guys are all profiled in the TwinsCentric Offseason Handbook.) Tell me which one you think the Twins should go after. Zack Greinke – Will likely get a nine-figure deal over at least six years. Jake Peavy – Re-signed with the White Sox for 2 years at $29M with a vesting option for a 3rd year. Hiroki Kuroda – Re-signed with the Yankees for 1-year/$15M. Dan Haren – Available. He’s getting “getting interest from lotsa East-coast clubs.” James Shields – Only available via trade, and probably not to the Twins after they traded away Denard Span. Edwin Jackson – Available. Most recently rumored to be courted by the Angels. Anibal Sanchez – Reportedly called a 4-year/$48 million offer from the Tigers a few weeks ago “insulting.” Says he is seeking a 6-year/$90M offer. RA Dickey – Available via trade from the Mets. The price for him is “very high.” Brandon McCarthy – Still available. However, several teams have expressed an interest in him including “the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Cubs, the Royals, the Diamondbacks and the Twins – and the Angels and Rangers are also expected to join in.” Ryan Dempster – The 35-year-old has been linked with the Twins, Diamondbacks and Brewers and is searching for a 3-year deal, likely for around $13M per year. Kyle Lohse – Represented by Scott Boras. ‘Nuff said. If you’re looking for some trends to take from this, it appears that each of these guys (with the possible exception of Haren or maybe McCarthy) is pushing for (and probably likely to get) $13-$15M per year. Also, each is looking for a deal at least one year longer than any fiscally sane club would want to give them. This is the “interesting” time, or, if you prefer, “hellish.” It’s looking more and more like teams are going to need to pay to play. We can look at a 5-year/$65M deal for Jackson or a 3-year/$33 million deal for McCarthy and say that’s “crazy,” and we’re probably right. But we can’t do that and then rip Ryan for not upgrading the rotation, or settling for names like Brett Myers, Kevin Correia, Joe Blanton or John Lannan. This is the way free agency works. The vast majority are overpaid. It is the nature of the system. When a player signs with the one team that offers him the most money, instead of the 29 that don’t, odds are that player is overpaid. We can rip the Twins for putting themselves into this position – this is why minor league development is so important – but that ship has sailed. If we want to focus on the problem at hand, the choices seem to be overpay or settle. Rock or Hard Place. Which way are you going to go?

I gotta say, I'm shocked at the low opinions of Dempster. This guy has been a 200 inning horse for something like 5 years. His xFIP each of those years is right around 3.7. Is it just the AL thing? To me, his stats are that of a clear #2 guy. Where is all the pessimism about him coming from? It seems a little crazy. What are you guys looking at?

I'd love to have him but it sounds like Cle is only letting go of him for pitching.

I'm very sorry about these problems. We are working to address them, but we unfortunately have a 3rd party involved.... Our ad supplier was bought by another company a few months ago, and I'm noticing problems like this during their transition. We've been meaining to look into other options, but just haven't had time to do so. It sounds like these are related to them messing up the feeed they're giving us. For instance, the load after the first page sounds like the ad after that first post is hanging things up. And we would NEVER willingly accept a video playing sound to pop up on the site. That's the ad company messing up the types of ads they feed us, just like they sometimes put larger ads in place of the smaller ones that we are supposed to show. We're very sorry about these sort of things. Unfortunately, fixing them is more of a process (and not one we can control directly) rather than a quick fix. I appreciate your patience, and don't hesitate to give us feedback when it's not going well. That's something we can take to our ad provider. Sincerely, John

It appears the Twins are looking hard at Dempster, and it appears he's pushing interested teams for a 3-year deal. That might be all that it takes to nab the 35-year-old who has been a dependable horse for the last five years. I don't know if the Twins could get him at 3/39, but I have to think they have a shot at 3/42. Would you do it? His baseball reference page is here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dempsry01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-www.typepad.com

For those who have listened to a bunch of the podcasts, I don't think it's uncommon for Aaron and I to need to become pretty frustrated with each other before we recognize a deeper paradigm that we haven't really uncovered. After the podcast we shared a pitcher, ordered a few burgers with the rest of the TwinsCentric guys, share a couple of more pitchers and talked through all kinds of stuff.

Re: Head-bobbing. I'll say this: the immediate body language of people around a close call absolutely can affect the perception of that call. I could believe that it would have a significant influence on an umpire. I'll relate it to something that parents of young children can relate. When your kids falls - just gets a bump, or a scrape, or tumbles down a couple of stairs or whatever - the worst thing you can do is immediately react as if they could be seriously hurt, like running over to ask if they're ok. The second you react that way, they are hurt. Bawling, OMG-this-world-is-terrifying, hold-me-NOW, hurt. They are reading you, your immediate reaction, and if it's alarm, they're alarmed. Instead, you learn to NOT react, like keep walking, glance over and say "Whoa! Good one! You shaking that off, sport?!?" Once you master that, your kid becomes infinitely tougher. This is not to imply that umpires are children, but the same thing applies. We look for immediate validation one way or the other, even if what we're judging is if we are in severe pain or not.

This is a really interesting story. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. This comes down to a simple question: how much do you trust this metric? BTW, it isn't about how much do you trust "pitch f/x". It's how much do you trust the method for converting the "framing" to run. And how convinced are you that the "framing" that is referenced is a skill of the catcher, versus the pitching staff, or the umpiring, or the counts that accompany the catcher. For instance, if Doumit tends to call more strikes early in the count than, say Molina, then one would expect the data to show that Doumit is worse at "framing" pitches. Why? Because it has been demonstrated (also using pitch f/x) that umpires are FAR more likely to count anything close to a borderline pitch a strike on a 3-0 or 3-1 count, or a ball on a 0-2 or 1-2 count. I don't have time to review the details of the metric, but the linked stories above seem to have quite a bit of detail. I'm looking forward to reviewing it. I'd encourage others to do so, too. I will say this: the thought that one's catcher, can effect a team by 60 runs based purely on his ability to frame pitches, is hard to believe. If so, it is a pretty huge finding, moreso than most defensive metrics and even moreso than McCracken's stuff. It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Congratulations. This isn't the "business plan" method of growing the Twins Daily community, but it'll do. :-) (On second thought, it's quite a bit better.)

To me, Sano and Buxton are A. Hick and Arcia are B. That's why, to me, Meyer is borderline B. It's also why I kept trying to understand objectively what is generally considered an A vs. B vs C prospect in terms of overall rankings. If, generally, the top 100 guys are considered B prospects, then given the rankings, Meyer is a B. I am a little amazed that everyone seems to want to sight his numbers in Low A (or his overall numbers, which are weighted more far more heavily by his Low-A numbers) rather than cast a skeptical eye over his High A numbers.

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?1212-Gleeman-and-the-Geek-Episode-70-Denard-Span-for-Alex-Meyer

Aaron and John record an emergency podcast to talk about the trade sending Denard Span to the Nationals for pitching prospect Alex Meyer, what it means for Chris Parmelee, how Span went from prospect bust to underrated big leaguer, why letter grades for prospects can lead to arguments, dropping Deolis Guerra from the 40-man roster, adding Jeff Clement for Triple-A depth, and why Hulkamania will never die. Here are: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes.

Aaron and John record an emergency podcast to talk about the trade sending Denard Span to the Nationals for pitching prospect Alex Meyer, what it means for Chris Parmelee, how Span went from prospect bust to underrated big leaguer, why letter grades for prospects can lead to arguments, dropping Deolis Guerra from the 40-man roster, adding Jeff Clement for Triple-A depth, and why Hulkamania will never die. Here are: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/majors/trade-central/2012/2614398.html Click over. It's not behind their firewall... They're fans of Alex Meyer, though they recognize the risk. If you want to get excited, here's the money quote....

We can't copy other stories into our forums because of copyrights. And CH, apparently I wasn't clear about these links going to he forum.

I usually write off fan reaction to player moves as overrated, but this is an interesting counter example I had not thought of.