Cap'n Piranha

Am I the only one confused by Rocco's pinch hitting today? Sending Donaldson in with 2 outs and a runner on first in the 7th? I feel he would have been better served being kept available for a juicier opportunity in the 8th or 9th. Even more baffling is letting Simmons hit in the 8th, but then pinch hitting the very next at bat for Gordon. I think I would rather have Arraez and Gordon bat, and not Simmons and Arraez.

I think that actually might offend him. Before 2020, Ryu got 4 and $80M, as a soon to be 33 year old, who had only made 30+ starts in a season once (in 2013). Berrios, when he hits free agency, will be four years younger, with a far better track record for durability, and FIP and xFIP that are not that far off of Ryu. Until he's actually in free agency, I think Berrios says no to any offer of $100M unless it's for 4 years or less. Like I've said before, it's not what the market will actually end up paying him that you're working against, you're working against what Berrios thinks the market might pay him.

Bro, it's not a swing, it's part of the whole picture. Expected performance and financial constraints are connected; if I asked you to pick which team would have a better record, but the only details I gave you about the teams was that one had a payroll of $100M, and the other had a payroll of $200M, which would you bet on? You can't just stick your fingers in your ears and pretend finances didn't play a role in the signing of Happ and Shoemaker. The Twins did not have the ability to spend better without spending more--in this case, those are the same thing. Are some of the other potential veteran starters performing better right now? Sure. Would it have been obvious in January/February those other options were superior to Happ/Shoemaker? No. Every person/entity is always up against a self imposed cap. I'm not sure why people expect the Pohlads to not profit off their ownership of the team, much less incur losses. I think the fact that the Twins held payroll largely steady despite probably over $100M+ in lost revenue last year, and continued lost revenue this year is commendable. I said it before, and I'll say it again--if you want to follow a team that has no payroll limitations, the Twins are not the team for you. Nobody is saying anyone is saying the last rotation spot should be a Game 3 starter. I'm not sure where that straw man came from. The Twins spent $10M for 2 starters--they didn't really have the ability to spend any more, and so they had to take bets on arms with some downside. Anyone else they could have signed for the same numbers also had downside. It just so happens the two guys they picked realized their downside--that's going to happen from time to time. FYI, there's no guarantee Hill/Ray/Kluber don't fall off a cliff soon. In fact, since I last posted, Ray had a start where he gave up 8 runners to Baltimore in 4.1 innings, and 2 earned runs. I also should have mentioned that Kluber is on the IL, and has been since late May. The Twins were never going to get two great options for $10M--they were going to get a couple of guys they hoped could eat some innings .

The Sox definitely got benefits, I just think it's pretty awesome to get $2m a year from an employer for multiple years, even when they haven't been your employer for almost 2 decades. To your point, I have to wonder if the Angels have thought about doing this with some of the albatrosses on their payroll, or even with Trout. I assume they have, but perhaps they haven't been creative enough?

Depending on the parameters, deferred money can actually work pretty well for both sides. The team gets cash freed up they can use to avoid the luxury tax/sign another player/invest towards future payrolls. The player extends their cash flow further into the future, and if they get enough money added on in the future, could come out better as well (A million today is better than a million 5 years from now, but there's a decent chance that $300k a year over 6 years is better than a million today).

This is what the Twins are up against right now. There are only two reasons for a player to sign a long-term contract before their initial foray into free agency. They're in the high minors, and signing an MLB deal immediately starts their service time clock, and ensures they never have to deal with arbitration or minimum salaries It's a hedge against injury/performance decline/non-materialization Point 1 obviously doesn't apply to Berrios, and point 2 appears not to either, as Berrios seems completely confident that he will remain a 2ish type pitcher (maybe a 1 in his/his agent's mind), and suffer no major injuries. As such, you can't just give him the deal he thinks he'll get in free agency, as by agreeing to that, Berrios is walking away from any and all potential upside (say the Yankees giving him $28M a year to keep him away from the Red Sox. Or the Angels being tired of second-fiddle in their market, and going over the top on the Dodgers. Or Seattle/Houston/St Louis/Atlanta getting involved). If Berrios thinks he can get 6/150 in 2 years, you probably have to give him 6/168 or 7/175 right now, otherwise he may as well wait and see if some other team is desperate for a starter and offers him 5/150.

We have a very good core of players, but need to make drastic changes to avoid being one of the 5 worst teams in baseball? I posit that if you have a very good core of players, you will not be a 100 loss team, and if you are a 100 loss team, you don't have a very good core of players.

According to Spotrac, indeed they are $8M in deferred salary. In even funnier deferred salary arrangements, the Red Sox are paying Dustin Pedrioa and MANNY RAMIREZ $2M+ a year through 2028 and 2026, respectively. That means the Red Sox won't have Manny off their books until 18 years after he stopped playing for them. It's the best deal ever (in a world where Bobby Bonilla doesn't exist).

I wasn't shifting the focus, I was calling out the absurtdity of you insisting we not look at moves in a vaccum, while completely ignoring the financial realities of the teams. Regardless of why they didn't have much money for new starters this year, they didn't have the money, and it's because they went all in for 2020. Is it therefore safe to say you would be against the Twins paying big money for a single player in the future, so they can keep payroll space open for mid-rotation starters in subsequent years? The Twins were indeed 11th in payroll in 2010, and 9th in 2011--maybe that was because of a once in a generation event, like say, a brand new stadium opening, or a record-setting contract going into effect? By 2012 they were down to 13th, and then 22nd in 2013; they've been in the 15-20 range ever since. As for the names of other players, again, you're the one who brought up the assertion that there were multiple arms the Twins could've pursued; of the three you listed-- Rich Hill was 41 before the season started, and struggle with health last year. He hasn't pitched more than 100 innings since 2018, had an xERA above 5, saw his k/9 drop by 4 while his bb/9 when up by 1. His 2020 babip was an unsustainable .240 and he had his worst swinging strike rate since 2010. I think most people would have pegged him for what has happened to Happ, that is, an old pitcher who stayed on one year too many. Robbie Ray has indeed been good this year, but is coming off a year with a 6.62 ERA, a 6.49 xERA, a 6.5 FIP, and a 5.84 xFIP; he was literally sub-replacement in 2020. He also walked almost 8 batters per 9 (somehow he's cut that down to 2.3 this year, his best rate ever), and didn't even average 5 IP/start. Ray would have been seen as a reclamation project, and not significantly better than Happ or Shoemaker Kluber only pitched one inning last year, and just 35 in 2019, when he had a 5.80 ERA (4.06 FIP, 4.88 xFIP). He would have been a gamble as well, and given that he barely averages 90 mph in velocity, there is a decent chance his 2021 success is short-lived, especially when you consider that his two best starts account for 17 innings with only two hits, but came against Detroit and Texas, who are 25th and 26th in OPS. Against the 2 offenses he's faced that rank 15th or higher in OPS (Toronto 3x, ATl 1x), he's averaged 4 IP, a 1.72 WHIP, a 4.60 ERA, 9 k/9, and 6.75 bb/9. While all of those guys have been better than Happ and Shoemaker, there was not really reason to assume that would be the case, and to be perfectly honest, we would not feel confident about any of them starting a game 3 or game 4 of a playoff series.

It's all well and good to say we don't want a rebuild, but I'm pretty sure one is coming. The Twins have at most 5 pitchers that can be counted on to be full year contributors next year (Maeda, Berrios, Ober, Rogers, and Duffey). With a 13 man staff, where you need at least 5-6 solid options in the bullpen, that means the Twins need to find at least 5-6 arms this offseason; if any of the above get injured, or regress (can't be counted out, especially for Ober and Duffey), that number goes up. We can hope that Duran, Winder, Balazovic, and a couple of relievers can make the jump from the minors, but can you really feel good about your playoff chances if you're counting heavily on 4-5 rookies? There also won't be a ton of money to spend, because while you're clearing about $43M with Cruz, Pineda, Simmons, Happ, and Shoemaker moving on, all of those guys need to be replaced, and Berrios, Buxton, and Garver will get raises. To truly feel good about competing, I think the Twins would need to spend around $70M a year in new contracts for 2022, and that's just not going to happen. Accordingly, the only thing that makes sense is to completely tear down, to try and shorten the imminent rebuild from 4-5 years to 2-3. Trade Cruz, Berrios, Buxton, and Rogers for sure--those guys should net you 4-6 Top 100 guys. If you find takers for Simmons, Sano, Donaldson, Duffey, Robles, or Pineda, trade them as well. Play Gordon every day in center or short to see where he best sticks. Let Rooker DH every day to see how he handles the bigs. Call up every reliever from AAA/AA you can to see if any of them show flashes. Get Miranda up towards the end of the year as well. With any luck, you'll find a couple of keepers from that group, have a farm system with 6-8 Top 100 guys, some high draft picks, and loads of cash to use starting in 2023 to build onto a core of Kiriloff/Larnach/Arraez/Jeffers/Duran/Balazovic/others.

This seems to contradict your claim in the immediately preceding post, where you opined that you can't imagine him wanting more than $20M AAV. Berrios is right around the 20th best starter in baseball over the past 3 years at almost any metric you look at (he appears anywhere from 17th to 25th on almost everything one would consider important for a starter; ERA, FIP, xFIP, k/9, bb/9, hard hit rate, swinging strike rate). That seems like something any number of teams would be interested in, particularly given the durability he's shown, and if more than one team wants him, the bidding war ensues which the Twins cannot be competitive in. The Angels have needed pitching for years, and in the next two years shed the contracts of Fowler, Cobb, Bundy, Quintana, Heaney, Upton, and Pujols. That's $111M they free up before 2023, meaning they could hand out 3 $20M AAV contracts next year, give out $20M in arb raises to their homegrown players, and still offer Berrios $30M AAV (given his willingness to bet on himself, do we really think a 28.5 year old Berrios would turn down a 3/$90M deal? He'd get to sign his second huge contract before 32, or the Angels could easily absorb 5 and $150M). The Dodgers will clear the contract of David Price next year, as well as Turner, Kershaw, Jansen, and Kazmir. That's also $111M, and they'll again have to replace those guys, but I don't think they'll struggle to find the coin (their current payroll is $250M, and they only have $107M in commitments for 2023). The Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox are also teams with deep pockets, in competitive windows, who are shedding salary to some degree in the next couple of years. I think it's very possible 2+ of those teams want Berrios as their number two starter. Would any of them be willing to pay $30M a year for that? Maybe not. But a year and half out, you're probably going to have to give Berrios that to keep him from exercising his right to find out. After all, if I can look all that up in about 15 minutes, I guarantee you Berrios' agent has as well. Should the Twins sign Berrios? In a vacuum, yes. In reality, no; because the only way you get him to sign on the dotted line right now is to give him either $30M AAV, or something like 8 and $200. Anything less than that, and he'll just wait for the bidding war after the 2022 season.

They didn't make poor financial decisions. There's not a single contract on this roster that was bad at the time of signing. The closest would be Donaldson, but even he provided a 129 wRC+ last year, and 118 this year. And was signed to be the piece that pushed the Twins over the top for 2020/2021. Has everything worked out with the players they've signed? No, but that's always going to be the case. If you reject the reality that the Twins will never be top 10 in payroll, then we're not ever going to be able to find common ground in this, mostly because you're on another planet. The Twins also did not print money last year. They missed out on high 8 figures, and maybe even just into the 9 figures of revenue. They are continuing to miss revenue this year. The Twins have indeed stayed middle of the pack on payroll, because that is where they will stay--that's my entire point; when you sign Donaldson, Pineda, Simmons and Cruz to 8 figure deals (the four are getting $54.5M this year), keep your arb eligible players instead of trading them (Berrios, Buxton, and Rogers are getting $17M), and sign team-friendly deals with your supposed core (Sano, Kepler, and Polanco are getting $21M), you end up with a pretty high base. Those 10 players make $92M, which means the Twins had at most about $45M to play with on their other 16 players, or less than $3M per player. If they spend $20M on two rotation pieces, they now have only $25M left for 14 players, which means they're essentially playing nothing but pre-arb guys. Who are the 3-4 SP's on one year deals worth $5M on average that you think would have been superior options to Happ and Shoemaker?

With all your talk about not looking at things in a vacuum, you seem to be ignoring the vacuum of payroll. As I mentioned in my response to Chief, the Twins were already at near record payroll BEFORE Happ and Shoemaker, DESPITE large reductions to revenue both last year and this year. If you want a team that's going to allocate $20M-$30M to it's 4th and 5th rotation spots, I suggest you check out Yankees/Dodgers Daily. You are in line for nothing but frustration if the Twins are the team you choose to follow.

The Twins payroll this year is just under $128M, which means if you cut off the $10M for Happ and Shoemaker, they would be at $118M. That's pretty much right inline with 2019 ($125M) and 2020 ($122M over 162 games). Given the collapse in revenue last year, and the expected reduced revenue this year, I don't think it's fair at all for the Twins to be characterized as cheap. What two starters could the FO have inked that would have been notably superior at the time of signing, without adding $20M or more in payroll?

Coming into 2021, neither was viewed as a bad starter, particularly as a 4th and 5th starter for a team with limited payroll capacity.

Here's your quotation I was responding to--"Flexen's 2021 numbers so far have been dragged down a bit by one disaster start -- but unlike Shoemaker, he's been pretty good in the others." That reads to me like you're saying he only had one not-good start. As I pointed out, he has had several bad starts; in fact, Shoemaker has had 5 starts under a 4 FIP, which is only one less than Flexen. Flexen is undeniably better than Shoemaker, but that in large part is because Shoemaker has ben even more feast or famine than Flexen--5 good starts (although not as good as Flexen's), 1 average start, 1 bad start, 3 horrible starts, and 1 worst-of-all-time start.

Mikolas' MLB FIPs in the first 3 years of his career were all superior to Flexen's FIPs in the first 3 years of his MLB career. Quibble about how to define success, but Mikolas was, at least by FIP, a definitively more successful pitcher than Flexen in their first three years. Mikolas was also only one year older than Flexen at their debuts, and himself had barely 100 IP at AA or above when he debuted, so it's not like he had garnered a bunch of extra experience. either

Flexen was also a 25/26 year old pitching in the equivalent of AA or AAA. He should be expected to do well. Put another way, I'm sure if you busted Randy Dobnak down to Wichita and left him there the whole year, he'd probably win that league's equivalent of the Cy Young. That doesn't all of the sudden make him a great MLB option. Further, if you look at Flexen's numbers game by game, it's not like the one disaster start is his only bad start. By FIP, he had bad starts against Detroit, Oakland, San Diego, Texas, Anaheim, and the Twins (minimum FIP in those 6 is 4.83, with 3 of those starts above 5 FIP). He's given up 4 ER or more in 4 of his 12 starts, and 3 ER in another 2 (and one of those was only a 4 inning start). In reality, Flexen has been feast or famine, with 6 very good starts, one average start, 4 bad starts, and one horrible start. With his low k rate (15.9%, league average is 24%), there is a lot of potential for regression here.

Most players in the bigs aren't there solely because their best is that much better than the guys in the minors' best. It's that the guys in the bigs are much more consistent at being their best. Put another way, if Celestino plays the best he is possibly capable of playing, it's probably not that much worse than the best Buxton is capable of playing; he's maybe 85 to 90 percent as good. However, how often does Celestino have a day where he plays the best he is capable of playing? Once every 5 days? Every 10? And how often does Buxton do it? Every 2 or 3? It's like the old football saying about lesser teams beating better teams--if the lesser teams plays a perfect game, they can beat the better teams (it's also how the Twins took 2 of 6 from NYY/HOU, 2 demonstrably better teams). The St Paul Saints would win 2-3 out of every 10 games against the Twins, because 2-3 times out of 10, the Saints would collectively do a better job of playing to their potential than the Twins. But the Twins win 7-8 times because the Twins collectively more often play to their talent. With more time and seasoning, Celestino will either increase the ratio at which he plays to his potential, or he will find himself first a AAAA outfielder, and then out of baseball.

The story that isn't told here that is interesting to me is that, in reality, injuries aren't up that much. If we take the number Tom showed for 2021 of 14,350 days, and divide it by .37 (as we're about 37% of the way through the season), we see that the league is on pace for 38,784 IL days. That is vastly down to 2019 (over 21%), and just 13.7% above 2018. Conversely, the Twins are on pace for 973 IL days, up 55% to 2019, but actually below both 2017 and 2018. This makes me wonder--is part of why the Twins won 101 games in 2019 because they were able to avoid the IL? The Twins reduced their IL days in 2019, at the same time as IL days in the rest of the league exploded. Now that they are back to being league average in IL days, they're back to being non-competitive.

Numbers 1 and 2 both make me nervous. Polanco's ankle seems to be a body part that will never be fully healthy until he stops playing baseball (maybe not even then). As such, the risk of .800 OPS Polanco vanishing at any moment is an inescapable reality. Add on the fact that both Arraez and Gordon are probably best suited to play second, I think if Polanco keeps this up for another 4-6 weeks, you try and trade him. On Rogers, I may be reading the numbers wrong, but it looks like he is at the bottom of the barrel in fastball spin, Max EV, and barrel rate, while also being solidly below average on hard hit rate. Also to consider--Rogers is essentially throwing two pitches this year, a sinking fastball (and throwing it harder than ever), and a slider (also harder than ever). Unfortunately, his slider grades out as slightly below average, which means Rogers is getting by on one pitch that has some concerns behind it. As he is now over 30, and only has one more year of free agency, I think it behooves the Twins to trade Rogers in July as well.

Agreed. When you throw tradition out by having backup catchers throwing 46 MPH softballs, you can't expect the other team to continue to respect tradition. Even if that was some back-end bullpen guy throwing 86, I still don't have a problem with swinging 3-0, but the whole "respect your opponent and the game" thing does not hold water when Tortuga is pitching.

Donaldson has the 4th highest OBP on the team; the three ahead of him are Buxton, Gordon, and Refsnyder. I don't think anyone would be excited about moving Donaldson down in the lineup for Gordon or Refsnyder.

The Series Win stat is inaccurate--The Twins took 2 of 3 from KC in the April 30-May 2 series, crushing them 9-1 and 13-4 on Friday and Saturday, while getting crushed 11-3 on Saturday.

I agree with this. Look no further than the team at the top of the Division Standings that has beat our brains in this year (combined score of the 6 games is White Sox 48-23, an average of 8-4). In the 2016/2017 offseason, the White Sox traded Sale and Eaton for Giolito, Moncada, Lopez, Dunning, and Kopech (Dunning was turned into Lance Lynn). Add in the 2017 mid-season trade of Quintana that netted Jimenez and Cease, and the White Sox added 6 key contributors to their current team by moving assets when it was clear the team's upside was gone.