Cap'n Piranha

Ok Armchair GM; which plausible moves would you have made this offseason that would have been clearly better both now AND before the 2021 season started?

A 24 year old whose clock hasn't started striking out 12.6/9 with a 3.60 ERA despite a .347 BABIP in AA has no value? If they fix his walk rate and his batted ball luck neutralizes, that's a pretty valuable piece in the bullpen. Mind you, I'm not saying that WILL happen, I'm just saying the possibility of it happening has value. Also, for what it's worth, I didn't say Falvine is competent, I said this trade proves they're not incompetent--we'd all gladly have taken Gant or Sisk over Happ right? SO to get both for Happ? Seems pretty good to me.

This is what I never get about the "SpEnD iN FA!!!!!!" crowd. It guarantees nothing, and often produces nothing, yet is universally treated as a surefire way to make the playoffs.

Sweet, disband your entire farm system, and just sign free agents. Then you never have to worry about prospects failing.

Ahh, gotcha. True, if they trade both Maeda and Pineda, there's not a whole lot of experience left to impart!

The fact that the Twins were able to turn 38 year old Happ on an expiring deal into a guy who has essentially the same numbers as Happ, but is 28 with another year of control AND a minor leaguer to boot is pretty strong evidence that Falvine aren't incompetent (or that Mike Girsch, GM of the Cardinals, is an absolute disaster).

Right, that's the point. Why is listening and setting a ridiculous asking price bad? Worst case scenario, you get an idea for how some other teams view Maeda at this point in time--if it turns out the league thinks 2020 was a fluke, that's valuable info. If they think the beginning of 2021 is the fluke, that's valuable too. Best case scenario you get a top 5 prospect who could be a star for years to come. Veterans to mentor the young starting pitchers can be easily obtained in the offseason, particularly when you have $40M or so to play with. Top 5 prospects can't be obtained easily at all in the offseason, no matter how much money you have.

Fair enough. It's certain Berrios would have left for potentially a glorified second-round pick in the most crapshoot draft in all of professional sports, but also potentially nothing. Better?

Why wouldn't you listen on Maeda? I doubt he gets moved, but if the Padres get panicky, and agree to give you Abrams + something else for Maeda and Rogers, I think you have to do that.

This is probably true. I imagine that if the Twins make the best offer for him in December 2022, he will be more than happy to rejoin the organization.

And Martin was the 5th pick last year. Hanging on to Berrios for a year your probably won't be competitive in, in the hopes of recouping a pick in the 31-38 range, as opposed to obtaining two guys who have already made it to AA makes no sense whatsoever. Berrios has no more practical value to the Twins, in terms of the production he offers. None of his remaining ~45 starts in 2021 or 2022 are likely to be for a Twins team on its way to the playoffs. As such, getting the maximum amount of value for him is the only logical course, and suggesting a potential comp pick in early July 2023 (which will not be on anyone's Top 100 list) is preferable to 2 guys in late July 2021 (both of whom are on the majority of Top 100 lists) is just insane.

There is 0 chance Lewis, who posted an 88 wRC+ in AA in 2019 and will turn 23 next year, will get busted down to A+, unless he is still recovering from an injury. Especially since in his last taste of organized ball, he slashed .353/.411/.565 in the AFL after the 2019 season.

Sure, those are big steps, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect each of those to be taken in a year. Hassell is doing well enough that he'll surely go to A+ next year (short of a dramatic decline in production in the last few weeks of the season). Even if he had to repeat A+, He would still hit AA at 22. If Hassell was matching the production in A, but was 21, or even 20, I'd be inclined to agree. But 3 years younger at this point is just a massive difference.

For the same reason you continue to acquire pitching prospects, even though you have Duran, Balazovic, Winder, Canterino, Ryan, and Strotman.

Nice of you guys to coordinate your analysis for us!

Works for the Rays.

This is true. It is certain that Berrios would have left the Twins for nothing after 2022. It is also certain that Berrios is not somehow immune to blowing out his arm on any given pitch.

I probably am, mostly because I tend to focus on stats, rather than projection. I will completely admit that I am potentially undervaluing both of these guys based on that. I'll also call out that I was hoping the Dodgers move last night would force the Padres to a more desperate place, and let us get either Abrams or Hassell. Hassell is 3 years younger, and putting up better numbers at A than Martin is at AA. FG also rates him higher on speed, which makes him more likely to be able to play some center, I woudl think. Abrams is 20, at AA, and putting up fairly comparable numbers to Martnin (although since his wRC+ is lower, I assume that means Abrams plays in a more hitter-friendly league). Abrams grades out higher on every tool than Martin, particularly speed, so he would be an almost for sure SS/CF for years to come. Now, Abrams may have been a pipe dream, but I thought a desperate Preller would maybe feel obligated to do whatever it took to get Berrios, and we could pry him away.

I'm a little less excited about this than the rest of the board seems to be. SWR seems ok--he's 20, at AA, and his FIP and xFIP are pretty good, so I'm optimistic there, but I'm worried about Martin. He's 22 at AA, so he's not particularly young for a to prospect at AA, and while I love his .424 OBP, I'm worried about his sub-.400 SLG, and .281 BA. Sounds less like a hitter, and more like a guy with a really great eye and approach. Fangraphs puts him at 35 currently, with a 60 future grade on the hit tool, and 35 current 50 future on game power. If that develops then yes you have something here, but he turns 23 before the 2022 season starts--if he doesn't break out next year, I don't know what happens to his value. I'm hoping there's maybe one more guy included here, otherwise it feels to me like maybe the offers weren't as robust as it sounded yesterday.

But they're not meaningless--I don't know how else to explain this to you. When you're negotiating with someone, and a third party asked what they offered, you're far more likely to reveal that than you are to reveal what you yourself offered, especially if that third party will then immediately inform other people you may want to do business with. People protect their information much more assiduously than they protect other people's information. This isn't ground-breaking stuff. Before signing with the Twins, Donaldson had put up 11.3 WAR in his previous 3 seasons. That is the same as in Buxton's entire CAREER. Donaldson had averaged 458 PA's, despite that sample size including his two most-injured seasons. Buxton's only hit that many PA's in the majors in a season once. If Donaldson's recent recurring injuries made his contract a risk, than Buxton's recent injury history makes him a potential disaster. The Twins bet on Donaldson staying generally healthy, like he did in 2019, and while they haven't gotten that, they haven't been super far off either--Donaldson already has basically as many PA's this year as Buxton has had every year of his career, save 2017. Sure Buxton is younger--but that's a bad thing. He's already more injury prone than Donaldson, despite being at the point in his career when he is less likely to get injured. To date, the Twins have paid Donaldson $21M, and gotten 2.5 WAR--market rates for FA. If the Twins end up paying Buxton $100M on the low end, and $150M on the high end over the next 7 years, they'd need to get 12 to 18 WAR from Buxton for it to equalize. That's 100% possible, especially if Buxton stays healthy and plays like he has this year. But the enormous risk you seem to dismiss outright is that Buxton could very quickly decline; he might not hit like this again--Joe Mauer never had another 2009 after he signed his contract. He might get moved out of center 2-3 years into the deal--like Joe Mauer. And he might miss 40-60 games a year with injuries. Should the Twins be so quick to sign a guy to a big deal when a very realistic possibility is that he becomes a corner outfielder with an above average bat, who also gets hurt a lot? I said struggle to reach 400 PA's a year--over 7 years that's 2800 PA's. From 2013 to 2019, only 136 players were able to hit that threshold, out of 423 players who had the minimum number of PA's to qualify for the batting title. I would happily take the under on a number of Buxton PA's in the next 7 years if the over/under is set at 2800. Teams get better by taking multiple steps. That's why I said the Twins need to be able to surround Buxton with talent if they're going to sign him. I'm not confident we can do that with what we have in the system right now, and the money we will be able to spend, at least not in the next 2-3 years. At that point, Buxton will be past 30, and likely in his decline phase, which for an individual of Buxton's profile (speedy, athletic, injury-prone), will probably happen in a hurry.

Are you saying you don't think Buxton is worth $20M a year? If not, why are you quibbling with the $20M number? Seems argumentative for argumentativeness' sake. I'm not using the cast of WAR on the FA market because Buxton isn't on the FA market for one, and WAR on the FA market is vastly overpriced. If a team full of replacement players is worth 48 wins, then to get to 95 wins (which should be the goal), a team needs 47 WAR. For a team like the Twins, whose payroll is going to be in the $130M to $140M range, that means the Twins need to keep their dollars/WAR at about $3M. If they pay Buxton $20M, and get 4 WAR, that means they need to get 3 WAR from a rookie-contract guy to offset that. Doesn't seem too difficult, other than over the past 5 seasons, it's only happened 3 times (2019 Garver, 2018 Rosario, 2017 Buxton--Arraez may have done it this year, if not for the injury). That leads to the other issue--what if the Twins pay Buxton $20M, and get 1.5 WAR? I'm also not ignoring his defense, and for the record, neither does WAR. Buxton gets 1.25 WAR tacked onto his total for every 162 games he plays in center field. If he has to move to a corner as he ages and his defensive prowess declines, as both Kirby and Torii had to, he immediately loses 2 WAR for every 162 games played (corners are valued at -0.75 WAR/162, compared to CF's at 1.25/162).

When you say Buxton is worth $20M a year, you have to take in to account how many games he plays. If he only plays 80 games, then that means over 160 games he's worth $40M--he has to be Mike Trout offensively to be worth that. If he plays 150 games for that $20M, then no, he doesn't need to be Mike Trout offensively to be worth that. But what evidence is there that suggests you can count on Buxton to play 130-150 games a year well into his 30's, when he hasn't been able to get anywhere near that in his 20's? As such, if you agree to guarantee Buxton $20M a year, you're either banking on a dramatic improvement in his health, or for him to play like one of the 5-10 best players in baseball when he's available. Either seems fairly fraught with risk. The foot/second data comes from baseball savant. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/byron-buxton-621439?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

Why would they disclose their counter? It lets every team, should he go to free agency, know exactly what to offer and makes it much harder to start a bidding war, which is the Holy Grail for every free agent. If the Twins offer is laughably low, they would absolutely disclose it, if for no other reason than to get a sense of if it truly is as laughably low as they suspect it to be. You keep talking about Donaldson as being injury prone, while ignoring the reality that he has been, on average, even in his most injured seasons, LESS injured than Buxton has. If Buxton has a worse injury record at 27 than Donaldson had at 33, what do you think Buxton's injury situation will look like in years 5-7 of a deal, when he will be 32-34 (with an extension) or 33-35? Since signing with the Twins, Donaldson has missed 52 games, which is 32%. That's not great or anything, but in that same timeframe, Buxton has missed 95 games, which is 59%. Stop pretending that Donaldson is not a significantly lower injury risk at this point than Buxton, just because he is still a risk. That's why Donaldson could get (essentially) 4/$92 before 2020--he had already accumulated over 40 WAR in his career (top 40 ALL TIME amongst 3B). Currently, Buxton is 21st amongst CF in WAR just since 2015. Is Buxton's ceiling higher than Donaldson's? Yes, and it's not even close. The potential maximum Buxton is a 10-12 WAR player who wins MVP, and is the best player in the game. Is Buxton's floor lower than Donaldson's? Yes--it is not impossible that Buxton struggles to accumulate 400 PA's for the rest of his career, and puts up 2-3 WAR while doing so. I'm not interested in going from 90 losses to 85. I'm interested in going from 90 losses to 90 wins, and then beyond. Unless the Twins have a plan to surround Buxton with enough talent to get us above that 90 win threshold, paying him is a waste, and they should not forgo the opportunity to add multiple high-level prospects to the system that could potentially match his ceiling, but would likely exceed his floor.

I would imagine if the Twins 7/$80M offer was 70% incentives, Buxton would have jumped at it. That would mean there were $186 MILLION in incentives. Unless the vast majority of that is tied to almost impossible to hit milestones (like 700 PA's, or winning MVP's), do you really think Buxton would turn down a deal with a potential AAV of $38.1M? I agree that $25M with incentives is fair--that works out to 7/$175, or $95M in incentives, which gives us a breakout of 54% incentives, 46% guarantees--not all that far off from what you're suggesting. If giving Buxton 7/$105M with $70M in incentives gets the deal done, then we're really not that far off, although I tend to disagree that a player who is averaging about 400 PA's a year should get 60%-80% of a $25M a year contract guaranteed. Perhaps the market will prove me wrong, but obviously, I don't think it will.

Buxton and his agent can focus on guaranteed dollars all they want, but I would be surprised if he got much more than $100M in guarantees. To get that a team will have to look at a guy about to turn 29 with a disastrous injury history about to lose his best asset--his speed, and decide to allocate over $20M a year for at least 5 years. It's just not likely that will happen unless Buxton can have a relatively healthy 2022 season with high level production. Buxton would love to sign a mostly guaranteed contract just like I would love to buy stocks that never decline in value, and split every 3 years. It wasn't really a risk to wait this long when Buxton had never been a particularly accomplished player, other than on the defensive side of the ball. Even last year, in his best offensive season, Buxton still had a .267 OBP, struck out 26.7% of the time, and only made 35.4% hard contact, with 20.8% soft contact. As such, the extension offers from the Twins would have been quite low, so he gambled on being able to stay healthy/increase his production--turns out he went 1 for 2. He should still think about accepting, because if the incentives are right, and he performs, he'll be paid market value. What happens if in April 2022, Buxton tears his ACL? How will that affect his value? I'd love to keep Buxton as well, but the reality of his injury history means you just can't guarantee him $20M a year and cross your fingers--not if you're the Twins. If some other team wants to do that, they should go ahead, but the most likely scenario is that they regret that contract.