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Eris

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Everything posted by Eris

  1. Eris
    Do we actually know why Kepler has refused to play CF. He has had hamstring issues the past couple of years he might be an increased injury risk. The other possibility is quality of play at each position where he is much better in RF.
  2. Eris
    The Twins are in a difficult situation in CF. It is hard to justify paying for another full time CF when you have Buxton.
  3. Eris
    I would take a flier on Frankie Montas, but not at $10-14 million. That seems too high a risk for someone with shoulder injuries 2 seasons in a row. It would need to be an incentive based contract. An offer would need to be attractive enough at the high end that he would take a lower base. Something like 5 million base, bonus dollars for innings and bonus dollars for position in Cy Young. Such that if he has a very strong year he would make 20 - 25 million. Frankie Montas had been on the DL earlier in the year of the trade with shoulder inflammation. I think his trade to the Yankees was similar to the Tyler Mahle trade. Both had been on the DL earlier, the acquiring team’s desperate for pitching before the playoffs made the trade and they lost big. The Yankees made out worse as they also traded Jordan Montgomery to the Cardinals to make room in the rotation and Montgomery pitched very well after leaving NY.
  4. Eris
    Multiple items can be true at the same time. As a % of revenue players don’t get enough from the value they produce. Some owners game the revenue sharing system by not giving more to players salaries as the concept was intended. Elite free agents probably get paid too much. Pre-arbitration players don’t get paid enough. And minor leagues players get screwed. I saw in the news about a week ago that the top 100 pre-arbitration players shared a bonus pool of $50 million (can’t find this number to confirm). I think this is a good idea, but the bonus pool $$ should be 10x larger. The average career of an MLB player is 5.6 years. The median is lower. That is, more than half of the players don’t make it to free agency in a position to collect on their years of effort to the game. Some of this is due to skills some is due to injuries. This number also doesn’t include the many minor league players who never make it. https://www.listfoundation.org/the-average-career-length-of-professional-athletes-in-north-americas-major-sports-leagues
  5. Eris
    Success would be if the team does not need to plan in advance for his expected absence from CF. Has the cause of Buxton’s knee issues been made public.
  6. Eris
    The MLBPA has always been about getting the most money for the best players in free agency —irrespective of the consequences for the average player. Remember it was the MLBPA who opposed steroid testing. All teams, including the Dodgers, have a limited amount of money to spend. When free agents get ginormous contracts it reduces the $$ pool for the average player. What will eventually happen (maybe we are here already) is there will be a two tiered salary structure. Lots of $$ for the very best free agents and league minimum for most of the other players. Also, these long term deals will eventually impact what future players get paid. IMO, the best salary structure for the long term interests of the game would be base salary + real performance bonuses (performance bonuses based on production are currently prohibited by the CBA). This approach has some issues such as a team would enter a season with an unknown payroll. Also, how is performance value measured (WAR or some other metric) does not capture a players true value. However, the current system is only functional because it takes advantage of young “cost controlled” players (and minor league players) by paying them only a fraction of their true value to the team/league. It also will impact the careers of average middle aged players as there will be less opportunities for them as they can be most easily replaced by young players making significantly less than an average veteran.
  7. Eris
    The Twins are average or above at most positions or have players who are set at a position. The exceptions are LF (but Wallner deserves to be given the starting job) and pitching. It hard to improve this team without paying a huge price either in trades or free agency. The cost of good pitching has hit the stratosphere and acquiring a front level starter is a huge overpay. I am not sure the Twins are in a position to take the risk of overpaying in prospects. Last year’s signing (Correa) and extension (Buxton) do have an impact on the roster flexibility. The Twins just signed Niki Goodrum to a minor league deal to provide infield depth. This possibly means that Farmer and/or Polanco are being traded. From this perspective not signing Kenta Maeda seems like a missed opportunity as he was responsibly priced and given his TJ, Covid, and how the Dodgers used him, did not have a lot of innings on his arm. Normally when the market is in overpay, it is best to be a seller. Unfortunately the Twins probably need to be buyers in this market and the players who they ideally would like to move have limited value. This is also where the lack of present value from the Berrios trade (Simon Woods Richardson) and the Jorge Lopez trade really bite.
  8. Eris
    Most frustrating was the lack of situational awareness to the hitting. When the bases are loaded with 2 outs, a single is a game changer. I think looking at SO vs HR is not a fine enough statistic. Run efficiency with RISP and 2 outs is probably what matters most (and how SO negatively impact that). looking at the top 30 fWAR players in 2023, only 5 had more than 25% K rate. Almost half of the Twins players had a K% > 25%. I am not sure I buy into SO don’t matter philosophy.
  9. Eris
    The real challenge in giving up a potentially very good hitter for pitching is that the FO can be right in their assessment but are an injury away from being a lopsided losing trade. Although these injuries happen with position players they are more likely to occur with pitchers. The question then is how to structure such a trade so that even in the worst case scenario the long term consequences for the team are minimal. I think Tampa does a lot of things correct in roster management. They mostly seem to be able to trade pitchers on expiring contracts and get exceptionally good value in return.
  10. Eris
    This is so true. The average cable bill as a result of sports bundling was $20/customer. Of course spread over the entire customer base. $100/month bills has led to the current cable cutting. If 1/3 (I think this number is high) of the households are sports watchers, The unbundled sports would need to charge users $60 or more / month to maintain the services. Very few people would pay that amount of money. I think the MLB streaming service is illustrative. It is slightly more than $20/month with local teams being blacked out. I live in NJ a can watch most of the Twins games. I would not pay $20/month if I could not watch the Twins. Even at the current price, I am thinking of switching to radio as I watch more than than half the games on the radio anyway.
  11. Eris
    I have not understood why Christian Vázquez’s contract is considered bad. Granted his offensive production was expected to be better, but he delivered 1 fWAR, which is about the average free agent cost/WAR.
  12. Eris
    The plan was to develop a pitching pipeline. Given the cost of acquiring pitching (both via trade and free agency) seems that the original plan is still the way to go.
  13. Eris
    The Rule 5 requirement is the player taken must remain on the active roster for a minimum of 90 days. This is from mlb.com. edited to add, from a 2017 article the 90 day roster requirement can be extended to the following season. https://theupsetsports.com/the-rule-5-draft-how-does-that-work/
  14. Eris
    One of the challenges with Steven Matz is that he has not put together 2 good seasons in a row.
  15. Eris
    Not sure about the why’s behind statistics but Fangraphs has Maeda at 5.2 WAR and Gaterol at 2.9 WAR since the trade.
  16. Eris
    No to a trade. There were only about 8-10 outfielders who were better in 2023 both offensively and defensively than Max Kepler. Getting an upgrade on both sides of the ball will not be easy.
  17. Eris
    I agree with your assessment, because of injuries it seems at times the Twins struggle to put together a decent outfield. The general theme of the article is that the Twins need a RH bat. I don’t necessarily agree with that as what Twins really need is for the RH bats on their roster to perform (Correa, Miranda, Buxton). However, one of the drivers for this theme is that up and down the farm system our top outfielders are LH bats. My suggestion was that we trade one of these LH hitting outfielders for an equivalent RH outfielder. Not that we trade an outfielder for a 1B.
  18. Eris
    Adding a right handed bat is difficult from a roster construction. The Twins have plenty of RH bats on the 40 man. Correa, Buxton, Miranda, Ryan, Lewis are all capable HR threats, that 3 or more as Lewis was also out for awhile of these individuals were injured or otherwise had poor seasons is the real problem. Can they swing a trade of one of their surplus outfielders (Larnach e.g.) for an equivalent RH bat.
  19. Eris
    I’m not understanding why the Tyler Mahle and Jorge Lopez trades are excluded. Without looking these up there is also Sam Dyson, Michael Fulmer, Kenta Maeda, Chris Paddock.
  20. Eris
    I agree with your assessment. The outfield is average to slightly above average. However, upgrading from this via a trade is not so easy. If you take Kepler as an example there are only about 10 outfielders who have both better offensive and defensive metrics than Max Kepler. (Data is from Fangraphs) It may take a significant package to acquire someone better than Kepler on both sides of the ball. Our best hope for OF improvement is internally. If the criteria is improvement in either offense or defense, but not both, than that is much easier to achieve.
  21. Eris
    In an article about ownership penny-pinching, one could conclude that many of the $$ spent last season did not contribute to the team’s on field performance. Add in the $10+ million on both Gallo and Vasquez and it is easy to see why ownership might be asking the FO “what did I get for my money last year. “
  22. Eris
    Kepler, Castro and Wallner had WRC+ above league average. Larnach was close to average with a WRC+ = 99. This is without Buxton. Granted, the defense is not elite. Data is from Fangraphs. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&type=8&season=2023&month=0&season1=2023&ind=0&pos=of&qual=150&team=8 By team OF, the Twins were slightly above average, 11th or 12th depending on which metrics are used. The OF position most in need of upgrading from 2023 is CF. Because of uncertainty surrounding Buxton, this also the most difficult to manage. There is also uncertainty with regards to Kepler and Wallner maintaining this past year’s production. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&type=8&season=2023&month=0&season1=2023&ind=0&pos=of&qual=150&team=0%2Cts&sortcol=21&sortdir=default&pagenum=1
  23. Eris
    One of the challenges the Twins have is that they are above average at most positions and therefore it is hard to improve the team via trades (except possibly by adding a starting pitcher, and that also comes with risks). The players most discussed in moving (Polanco and Kepler) will not bring a decent MLB ready pitcher. Unless we get lucky as in the trade that brought Joe Ryan.
  24. Eris
    I think one of the challenges in assessing the value of Trevor Larnach is that he has not been able to stay healthy.
  25. Eris
    Not meaning for this comment to take anything away from Texas, but Fangraphs have Dusty Baker an F for his in game management. One of the reasons was for continually using the same 3 relievers until they were out of gas. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/alcs-managerial-report-card-dusty-baker/
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