Cap'n Piranha
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Everything posted by Cap'n Piranha
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I'd take him too--my only point was that Berrios' value is built on his availability, not max ability.
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Yes it would. Your point? I've always said durability is an asset. but assuming that because someone has been durable they will continue to be durable is a gamble--the Blue Jays are cleraly content to take that gamble. Johan Santana pitched 960 innings in his age 23-27 season, Berrios has pitched 850--both were extremely durable. But Santana only had one more great season left, 3 more very good, one ok, and then was out of baseball. Is it crazy to say that could also be Berrios' post-age 27 season path? fWAR does use FIP, but a modified version (see below). In essence, pitchers get credit for IF FB as K's in the WAR calculation, and the FIP constant is also changed. I used both FIP- and xFIP- as two metrics that are not reliant on innings pitched, and therefore strip quantity from quality. The point I'm making is that Berrios is the Bizarro Buxton--he's a good pitcher who posts great WAR because he doesn't get hurt (whereas Buxton is a great player who posts good WAR because he's constantly hurt). Therefore, if Berrios ceases being able to make 30+ starts a year, his value is dramatically impacted, as he's not a great pitcher, but rather a very good one. That said, there are worse things in baseball to spend $20M on than a very good pitcher.
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Here is your quotation, from your post at 9:23 AM this morning. "Wasn't the window clearly open when they won 3 division titles? They barely did a darn thing." I'm not claiming it, you said it. You even admitted in a further post you said it, so I have no idea where this sudden denial is coming from. I apologize for equating "barely did a darn thing" with "haven't done anything". Nit successfully picked. Cruz was signed to a deal that could cover two years--if it's basically a one year contract, then it's also basically a two year contract, since it could easily be either.
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Completely fair--everyone has an amount for which they would be willing to abdicate personal preferences in location. That said--the Twins have to concern themselves much more with the downside of deals than East Coast teams generally do. If Wheeler becomes a 3 WAR pitcher, the Phillies have the resources to survive paying $25M a year for that. The Twins generally do not, so if they are committing to that, it has to be for a player quite unlikely to underperform. This is why Buxton remains unextended.
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Do we know if Wheeler's agents met with the Twins simply as a courtesy? Perhaps those agents have other clients that might be open to signing with the Twins in the future, and wanted to build a relationship with Falvine/get an idea of how Falvine approaches FA negotiations? Unless there is hard evidence that Wheeler would have been willing to sign with the Twins if they had made the best offer, his agents meeting with the Twins in no way indicates that Wheeler didn't sign here simply because of a lowball offer. It also is not a refutation of the widely-reported claim that Wheeler was just not interested in signing in the Midwest.
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Cruz was signed to a two-year deal, and then another 1 year deal--2+ months of him was then turned into (potentially) 6 years of a cheap starter and 6 years of a cheap reliever. Don't forget other ancillary moves like Castro, Gonzalez, Pineda, Romo, etc. They also oversaw the blossoming of multiple young players, including Polanco, Kepler, Garver, Rogers, Duffey, Arraez, and yes, Buxton and Berrios. You can not like the FO's strategy, but to look at a team that has made the playoffs in 60% of Falvine's tenure, when that team averaged 93 losses for the 5 years prior, and claiming they haven't done anything seems odd.
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I'm no financial/legal expert, but how exactly does one earn revenue from selling something not owned by the seller? Also, the idea that increasing value is inexorably tied to increasing revenues is also not rooted in reality--witness the stock market.
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What I can find is that Cleveland's local TV deal is worth right around $50M. Radio has to be far less (a quick search doesn't reveal any concrete numbers). ESPN reports local attendance at just over 1.1M fans--if each spent $40 all in (seems reasonable, albeit probably on the high side), that's another $44M. Add in local naming rights and other revenues, and the Guardians probably land at around $120M to $130M. Are they really getting $150M in money from MLB? I somehow doubt that, although I'm open to be convinced otherwise.
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Having an asset valued at something is not the same as having that amount of money. The teams' books are closed, so we can't possibly say how much money they have--that said, if the teams have so much money, why would the Guardians' owners want to sell a piece of that, thereby reducing their cut of that money? The league lost Billions in revenue in 2020, and almost assuredly in 2021 as well; why is it so hard to believe owners might want to retrench, especially with the vast uncertainty around COVID in the winter of 2020/2021?
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My point is his value is based largely on durability, not top-level performance. The outcomes he has produced are somewhere between very good 2nd starter, and lower tier 2nd starter, borderline 3rd starter. If the price to secure that in FA is $20M/year, that is not something the Twins are currently capable of doing. As such, what makes sense is a pivot to offering young pitchers extensions much sooner (for example, assuming Ober and Ryan repeat/improve on their 2021 performance, giving them both an extension for 6-7 years and $50M-$60M).
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Completely agree they didn't do anything going into this year--I assume that's because massive losses in 2020, and the uncertain financial outlook in 2021 kept them from truly swinging for the fences, especially because the roster was still projected for the third most wins in the AL (according to the site below). Would I have liked to see them do more? Without a doubt, but I can understand why they didn't. https://www.vegasinsider.com/mlb/odds/win-totals/
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I would be shocked if the Twins offer this past July was actually 5/$75M; that may have been a contract they offered--before 2019. My guess is that this past July they indeed offered 5 years, but for $100M, and a portion of that was incentive based. That would be a pretty easy offer to reject for Berrios, in my opinion, but not a slam dunk refusal.
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Your point was predicated on a window being open, due to a run of 3 straight division titles. Setting aside the fact that no such run has occurred since 2002-2004 (when Falvey was busy with undergrad classes at Trinity College), if the winning of division titles is what opened the window (meaning the window only opened in 2019), why would you ding them for not doing anything during the window when in fact the window wasn't open in 2017 or 2018?
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I'm not using cheap in a pejorative sense, I simply meant the Pohlads/Falvine were not willing to commit the amount of money necessary to convince Berrios to sign. Again, the years are not the issue, it's the total money. Berrios could have gotten a 7 year, $75M extension from the Twins whenever he wanted in the past 3-4 years. He would not have gotten a 2 year, $100M extension. Berrios just guaranteed himself $131M over 7 years--if he was willing to guarantee himself $131M over 10 years back in July, I doubt very much he gets traded. Obviously people can change their minds--it's why I said I don't think Berrios did WITHOUT an impetus, i.e. he didn't wake up one day after years of working towards the hope of a FA bidding war bonanza, and say "you know, I think I'll just sign an extension today. Why not?" Maybe he had a change in his personal life we don't know about. Maybe his arm is still sore, and that's concerning to him because in years past it wasn't in mid-November. I would argue all of that would fit under point two--willing to take a discount to stay in TOR.
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The Twins under the current FO have only won 2 titles (2019 and 2020)--the first was not expected, although they did sign Cruz immediately prior to that season. In 2020, they traded for Maeda (who went on to finish second in AL Cy Young voting), and signed Donaldson to the largest FA contract in team history--hardly "barely...a darn thing".
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I can't imagine Berrios would change his mind about an extension absent some kind of impetus--I think that's covered in my 3rd point. I suppose it's possible Berrios just decided to stop rolling the dice on continued health, but that seems out of character for him, and if that's what is driving his openness to this deal, then I'm glad we didn't commit 7 years to a guy who all of the sudden doesn't believe in his ability to stay durable. Not going to 7 years would fit under my 4th point (Pohlad's/Falvine are cheap). After all, if Berrios asked for a 10 year, $50M contract, I'm sure Falvine would have run through walls to present him with that contract.
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MLBTR now reporting the escalators can add up to $10M to the deal--if that is correct, I am shocked. As another poster mentioned, Martin/SWR will both have to really work out, otherwise this was a massive mistake.
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Berrios is indeed 4th in the league in fWAR over the past 5 years--if the league in question is the AL. Expand it to MLB, and he drops to 14th. Berrios' durability also potentially works against him here--as fWAR is a counting stat, staying healthy can skew this number (much like RBI numbers can be skewed by batting cleanup for 150 games). Indeed, if you look at FIP- for the last 5 years, Berrios drops to 33rd in the league; by xFIP- it's 51st (not for nothing, his mark of 93 is identical to Joey Lucchesi, Micahel Pineda, and Kyle Gibson). Now durability is obviously an asset--you can argue it is better to have a starter who makes 30 starts with a 3 ERA than a starter who makes 10 starts with a 2 ERA. Jose Berrios is indeed durable--until he's not. Perhaps Berrios pitches 10 more years without a single major injury. Perhaps Berrios blows his arm out in his very first start of 2022. The Blue Jays are gambling $20M+ a year that a clear 2nd starter by quality can become a 1st starter through quantity. I'm not saying Berrios won't, but this is a gamble on Toronto's side.
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I always thought Wheeler's 5 yr/$118M was the baseline for Berrios--signed two years later, but with Berrios younger at the time of signing than Wheeler, with Wheeler having the higher ceiling, and Berrios the (much) higher floor. We'll have to see what the escalators are, and how the annual salaries work out, but it seems unlikely Berrios will make $118M in the first five years without activating those escalators. As such, it's hard for me to definitively say whether this is good or bad yet. If the escalators simply add $2M for every remaining year of the deal every time he hits 200 IP, then the Twins should have signed him to this deal. If they add $5M for every remaining year of the deal every time he hits 150 IP, then I'm glad the Twins didn't sign this deal. Clearly I'm exaggerating for effect here, but simply to prove a point--minus knowledge of the escalators, we can't confidently say what this deal is, therefore we can't confidently say if it's good or bad the Twins didn't sign Berrios to it.
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As I see it, there are 5 possible explanations for why this deal happened. Berrios wanted a premium in order to stay in MN Berrios was willing to take a discount in order to stay in TOR Berrios and his camp are more pessimistic than average about the players' chances in the upcoming CBA The Pohlads/Falvine are cheap The contract features escalators that add $70M-$100M to the deal, Falvine was aware of this, and decided he would prefer to give that contract (or a portion thereof) to a different pitcher, and still get two premium prospects Of these, I think 5 is the most likely explanation, but it certainly could be any one (or two, or three) of the above.
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Perhaps I missed it, but I'm not aware of any quotations from the Twins FO that Berrios wanted to test FA. To be fair, I'm not aware of any quotations from Berrios either; my recollection is that Berrios' refusal of multiple extension offers, and willingness to go to arbitration to maximize his earnings led many/most to infer Berrios was insistent on that path. Falvey/Levine publicly throwing their employer under the bus seems like an excellent way to demolish their careers in Major League Baseball.
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Twins Hire Jayce Tingler as new Bench Coach
Cap'n Piranha replied to Sousy's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Fair point. -
Twins Hire Jayce Tingler as new Bench Coach
Cap'n Piranha replied to Sousy's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
ex·ag·ger·ate /iɡˈzajəˌrāt/ Learn to pronounce verb verb: exaggerate; 3rd person present: exaggerates; past tense: exaggerated; past participle: exaggerated; gerund or present participle: exaggerating represent (something) as being larger, better, or worse than it really is. "he was apt to exaggerate any aches and pains" -
Twins Hire Jayce Tingler as new Bench Coach
Cap'n Piranha replied to Sousy's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Definitely agree with this. It's why I'm thankful that here in the US women aren't allowed to vote, and we count black people as 2/3 of a person when determining representation. Backing down from those positions would have shown a real lack of leadership from our country. -
Twins Hire Jayce Tingler as new Bench Coach
Cap'n Piranha replied to Sousy's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Thank goodness. I was about to have to oppose this hiring on those grounds alone.
