Cap'n Piranha

If a person finds themselves unable to make ends meet, the odds are that better budgeting will be at least a portion, if not the entirety, of the solution. It is unlikely that 18-24 year old men healthy enough to play baseball full time will have the kind of ongoing costs that would render them unable to improve their financial situation through increased fiscal responsibility.

30k in available money to spend is nowhere close to poverty. Even if you take 10% off for agents fees, they still have $27k, so they could spend $5400 on rent ($450/mo), $5400 on food, $5400 on other bills, and still have over $10k left to do whatever they want with. It's befuddling to me how many people can't seem to grasp what an actual poverty rate is--according to the federal government (source below), it's just under $13k. A player who plays May to September will collect 22 paychecks of at least $500, and will earn anywhere from $11k to $15.4k. As such, a player would be at the poverty line only if they were at A ball and made little to no money outside of their MiLB gamechecks, and had no bonus money to supplement their paychecks. https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/poverty-guidelines/prior-hhs-poverty-guidelines-federal-register-references/2021-poverty-guidelines

If someone needs to pay $300 a month in rent (which would be for 4 people living in the 4 bedroom house example I've been using), then for that to be less than 30% of rent, they need to earn only $1,000/month after taxes, or $250 a week. Players in A ball make twice that (albeit before taxes). Assume a player in Low A plays the whole season there, and collects 24 weekly paychecks, which is $12k. Assume in the other 28 weeks of the year, they make $300 a week ($15/hr at 20 hours/week, $10/hr at 30 hours/week, or $7.50/hr at 40 hours/week). That adds up to another $8,400, so a yearly total of $20,400. According to the calculator below, that person's tax burden is $3,101, leaving them with $17,299 left. That $300 share in the apartment is $3,600 a year, which is 20.8% of the take home pay. My thinking is not whackadoodle, but yours is completely devoid of mathematical comprehension. https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#0lMkUlDUp9

Not sure how this relates to my post. My point was that if paying $7M a year for the entire MiLB player roster would be a huge enhancement to the performance of MiLB players, and correlate to them being better upon hitting the majors, why wouldn't the Rays or A's, two teams that value analytics, and need to save money wherever possible, have already done this? I'm not saying this proves increased pay for MiLBers does not move the needle; I'm just saying if it was such and open-and-shut case, some team would have already done it, not because they'd attract more talent, but because the talent they get would be improved, and would be better players at the MLB level for that team, and better trade chips as well.

I would think it would not be too hard to get a 6 month lease for not that much more than a one year--even if it was a 25% kicker, the cost would still be only $165-$375 a month in the example I provided. Renting an apartment at the beginning of the season for one year is also an option--if 5-6 guys from a team are doing that, with the understanding that if a guy gets promoted, he's off the hook, and they simply bring in whomever takes his place, it wouldn't be that difficult. While that might not work during spring training or instructs, the 6-8 month lease is still an option.

You don't have to be the "most" financially responsible, you just have to be reasonably financially repsonsible. I don't think it's crazy to suggest that we should expect adults (by and large) to be able to handle their finances--if the vast majority of MiLB players are so financially illiterate that they can't do that, that is a society problem, not a baseball problem. MiLB pays above minimum wage, so this is not an issue of players not being paid enough to live, it's a problem of too many MiLB players not understanding how to budget. Therefore, simply increasing their pay is unlikely to fix the issue. If someone is irresponsible with $20k-$25k a year, they are not likely to all of the sudden become wise stewards of their money when given $50k.

I would be completely fine with trading Buxton, so long as the package is right. In my mind, that only happens if it's part of a bigger deal, with my pipe dream being the below; Padres get--Buxton, Rogers, Garver, Ober, and Barnes Twins get--Abrams, Hassell, Gore, and take back Wil Myer's salary The Padres manage to add some star power to their lineup and bullpen, without increasing their payroll (or if they do, barely), and add two backend options to their rotation, which is what let them down this year. The Twins add two premium position player prospects, which will allow them to turn around and use Lewis, Martin, Miranda, Arraez, Larnach et al for trade bait for pitching to further buttress a system which could be the best in baseball next year. While this would absolutely mean the Twins are punting on 2022, a lineup in 2023 with some combo of Abrams, Polanco, Martin, Miranda, Kiriloff, Jeffers, Arraez, Larnach, Celestino is intirguing, and would be cheap enough to allow the Twins to invest heavily in starting pitching on the FA market.

The only thing the Rays have to gain by sweeping the Yanks is potentially knocking them out entirely. That's such a low probability that I don't think they seriously pursue it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the Rays try and win tonight, see what tomorrow looks like, and adjust accordingly.

We need to move beyond the idea that there will be set starters at every position. Polanco at 2B, Buxton (if not traded) in CF, and a FA at SS should be the only starters that play at the same spot every time they play. The Twins should bring 13 players north next year, and most of them should play multiple positions, and allow Rocco to create lineups based on matchups. Here's the 13 players I would choose; Garver Jeffers Kiriloff Sano Polanco Arraez FA SS Donaldson Miranda Larnach Buxton Kepler Celestino Your DH will differ on a daily basis, dependent on matchups and health, and I also wouldn't be opposed to trading either Jeffers or Garver, and getting a better left-handed catcher than Rortvedt. The other option is to trade Sano, and turn Garver into a 1B/DH who can catch a handful of times a year, and make Rortvedt your second catcher. Lewis and Martin can be trade bait for starting pitching, or can take the place of Arraez/Donaldson/Kepler when they're ready. Every team will have around 6k PAs in a year, so with 13 guys, you can average about 450 PAs per player.

I read the same article, and the thing that struck me was that it seems like a lot of these MiLB players make pretty poor decisions on their finances. The main subject of the article, for example, played this year for a team based in Madison, AL. A quick rent.com search showed multiple listings of 3-4 bedroom places for around $300/br a month. For someone making $600-$700 a week, that is perfectly affordable, particularly if roommates are brought in (which would reduce the cost to $150-$200 a month). No one is getting rich playing MiLB ball, but that's true for just about every entry-level position in any industry, particularly one where supply far outstrips demand. Would a smart organization do more to provide for its MiLB players? I personally think so, but as I've previously said, the fact that every smart organization has to this point declined to do so suggests that the wisdom of providing more for MiLB players as not so obvious as it might appear.

I am not aware of any players on an MLB roster living in their car; for most teams the most valuable commodities are in the majors. I do find it interesting how "little" it would cost to pay all MiLBers, which to me, raises a question; why isn't an analytically-inclined team seizing that opportunity to grab an advantage against their competitors? The Rays or A's, for example. It would seem to me that the logical answer is that organizations don't believe paying MiLB players the amounts you've highlighted above would move the needle. Are they wrong? Perhaps. But I think those organizations are probably better able to make informed analyses of that question than we are.

If Joe Ryan has a 6-8 year career as a starter where he puts up 1,000-1,200 innings of 4.00 ERA pitching, all for about $30M, then Faucher would have to be Mariano Rivera for this to not be a fleecing. The only way for the Rays to win this trade is for both Ryan and Strotman to flop, and do so quickly. That said, if Nelson Cruz figures prominently in bringing a WS title to Tampa, the Rays will probably not care so much if they "lost" this trade.

Tanking is what teams do, now that teams have figured out that lowercase 'w' winning is no longer the best way to uppercase 'w' Win. Certainly, tanking in the NFL/NBA in order to get draft picks is a much more straightforward path than MLB. That said, it is better to draft higher, and not just in the first round, but in every round. In 2012, the Twins won 2 more games than the Rockies, and 5 more than the Cubs. Tank better, and they have Bryant or Gray instead of Stewart. In 2013, the Twins won 3 more games than the White Sox, and the same as the Cubs (but "won" the tiebreaker). Tank better, and they have Rodon or Schwarber instead of Gordon. In 2014, the Twins won 6 more than Arizona, 4 more than the Rockies, 3 more than the Rangers, and the same as Houston (and once again "won" the tiebreaker). Tank better, and they have Swanson, Bregman, or Tucker instead of Jay. Now, there is butterfly effect (maybe those players develop completely differently if the Twins are overseeing them), and there's no guarantee the Twins don't still take Stewart, Gordon, and Jay. There's no guarantee the Twins don't take a different guy that would have still failed (Appel, Tate, Aiken, Kolek, etc.). But had the Twins lost 20 more games across those 3 seasons, we could have Bryant, Rodon, and Bregman on this team right now, and for the least 4-6 years--that's a huge improvement. My perspective is that going into the offseason, every team needs to figure out how realistic the chances are that they win 90 games. If it's above 50-60%, the goal should then be to figure out how to win 100 games. If it's below 50-60%, the goal should be to figure out how to lose 100 games, while frontloading the rebuild (that means every guy with less than 3 years of control left either gets extended or traded). The worst place a team can be is in the 70-90 win range; if you can't accelerate out of that, you need to slam on the brakes, and refill your tank to you can floor it in 1-3 years, and not 2-4 more years after that lost season.

I would go even more radical on the batter side of this--every batter must stay in the box for the entirety of the bat, and can only ask for one timeout. The timeout is for 15 seconds, and he can step out of the box, but he must have both feet back in the box when the timeout is over, or it's a strike. To give a batter the opportunity to reset, the pitcher must wait until the 10 second mark to start his motion. 6 pitch PA's would therefore take, at most, about 2:15, meaning 18 pitch half-innings should complete in 8-9 minutes. 12 pitch half-innings could be accomplished in as little as 4-5. I also think you can keep the clock when a runner is on base, you just change it to 15 seconds to either throw the pitch, or attempt the pickoff--a step-off does not count. Failure to do so is an automatic ball, and failure to do it twice in a single plate appearance is a walk where all baserunners advance one base.

115 ERA- in 2014. He was 15% worse than the average MLB starter. xFIP- of 105--he was 5% worse than the average pitcher. There were 88 qualified pitchers in 2014, and Gibson was 73rd by ERA-, and tied for 56th by xFIP-. If you expand the sample to pitchers who threw 120 innings, you get 128 guys--Gibson was tied for 98th in ERA- and 75th in xFIP-. Not for nothing, but in 2014, Gibson had a worse xFIP than Ricky Nolasco. I think you are missing the fact that the current era is harsher on pitchers than the past was. In 2014, the entire league's starters put up a cumulative 3.82 ERA, 3.81 FIP, and 3.78 xFIP. For 2021, those numbers are 4.32, 4.28, and 4.22. A 3.99 xFIP is pretty nice in 2021, but pretty bad in 2014.

Not to mention SWR, Winder, Canterino, and Varland. The Twins have 8 pitchers 26 or under at A+ who profile as potential #3 starters or better (Ober, Ryan, Duran, Balazovic, Winder, SWR, Canterino, Varland). If none of those guys hit, Falvine should probably be shown the door. If 1-2 of those guys hit, we're in ok shape. If 3-4 hit, we're in fantastic shape.

By decent, you mean a 100 and a 97 FIP-, in his age 26 and 27 seasons? You're right, he was not fringe, but no one is saying he was fringe. What I and others are saying is that Gibson was not a particularly attractive piece for future rotations, other than his ability eat innings while providing league average results. He was not young enough (he turned 29 at the end of the 2016 season) to be seriously seen as an upside candidate, and his performance (league average) was not good enough to make him a nice piece. That said, you're right--Kyle Gibson's 88 ERA+ exiting the 2016 season, given that it covered far more innings than Dobnak's 88 ERA+ is more meaningful. Post-2016 Gibson had done much more to prove that he was a below average MLB pitcher than Dobnak has.

They were, but they were also rapidly approaching the end of their career (Santana), and were statistically worse than the average MLB pitcher (Gibson). The Twins entered 2017 with a #2 who could fall of a cliff at any moment, a #4 who was about to turn 29, and a 22 year old who everyone hoped would be an ace, but had just finished a season where he pitched like a AAAA guy. The 2022 Twins will have a 26 year old #4 (Ober), a 25 year old who has pitched like a #2/#3 for his entire professional career (Ryan), 3-5 highly-regarded starters at AA or above (Duran, Winder, Balazovic, SWR, Strotman), and $30-$50M to spend in FA to procure pitching. That's better.

Brock hit a lot of points here (specifically, fortune 500 companies won't pay as much to advertise teams with fewer fans--there is nothing that prevents Target from sponsoring the Yankees, or United Health Care the Dodgers), but your idea that attendance is all fans is good for is just wrong. Fans also buy the cable packages that provide a huge chunk of team revenue. The more fans watching, the more the team can extract from cable channels for rights. Fangraphs estimates (in 2020) that the Twins would make $43M from their cable package--they peg Atlanta at literally twice that. Are the Braves just that much better at negotiating rights fees than the Twins, or is it because there are more fans in Atlanta (due to having 70% more people in their metro area) who will buy the cable package, and therefore see the ads? Attendance is also a giant chunk of revenue. If the Twins average 20k fans a game, who each spend $30 on average (almost assuredly low when you consider ticket, concessions, and merch) for 81 games, that's just shy of $50M. Clearly, having more fans to attend your games is a big deal, and if you look at the 2021 attendance numbers, you'll understand how big a deal having people, more so than corporations in your market is. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-update-the-estimated-local-tv-revenue-for-mlb-teams/ https://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance

Celestino was bad this year. He was also a 22 year old with 24 total games above High A being told to play center field in the majors. Look at what he's done in AAA since he's been there (where he should be at this point in his career)--.909 OPS, 144 wRC+. For what it's worth, that's not too far off of Jose Miranda, who is the no-doubt MiLB player of the year for the Twins. Larnach, despite all his struggles, still put up an 89 wRC+ in the bigs as a 24 year old who hadn't played ball in 18 months. His wRC+ has been above 139 at every stop in the minors before this year, which is better than Nelson Cruz' career wRC+. His slump is concerning, but to write off either of these guys, much less both, as career bad 4th outfielders before they turn 25, and after a combined 360 MLB PAs is just ridiculous.

The smarmy meme that was on something like page 2 of this thread, and hasn't featured in our conversation for at least 5 or 6 posts now? Move on friend. If one picture is enough to annoy you for multiple days, you either need to learn to relax, or get off the internet. Also, I had no idea that's what was annoying you. None at all. Because I generally don't assume that adults get upset over harmless pictures on the internet. If that picture is the most annoying thing that's happened to you lately, you have a blessed life. If it's not, perhaps engage in some perspective. It's a picture, man. As Leviathan has pointed out, no one is accusing you of saying TR should have been kept. I'm simply trying to say that it is not cut and dry that the post-16 pitching staff is superior to the current one. In many ways, it's not. I doubt that after 2016, when the Twins had the clear-cut worst pitching staff in major league baseball, a consistent trend for basically the last 6 years at that point, no one thought there were good pieces on the staff. So no, given the loss of an entire year of MiLB development, and the run of injuries to the current staff, I don't think Falvine has a worse staff right now than the one they inherited. Does the staff need improvement? Absolutely. But there is more reason for optimism now than there was in November 2016. Cosy Stashak is under control by the Twins, and therefore is a potential future piece in the bullpen. Seems like a germane point in a conversation about if the current future pieces are better than the 2016 future pieces. None of the three I listed might be on the roster next year, but that's not the point I was making. All three of them are performing better this year than any of the three best bullpen options you had on your list of the 2016 pitching staff. I'm not sure why that's so hard for you to admit. Here's the key quotation from the post that has driven this entire thread--it's from Gunnarthor, and is literally the second post in the thread; "they [Falvine] were given a team with a nucleus of Buxton, Sano, Kepler, Polanco, Berrios, Rosario along with solid vets in Santana, Gibson, Escobar, Dozier and a few up-and-coming prospects who, while not core quality, were good in May, Rogers, Duffey and Garver. The team was a year removed from nearly making the playoffs. They were also gifted a solid farm system and the first pick in the draft as well as a supplemental first rounder. That core was going to win, no matter what" (emphasis added) That doesn't sound like someone saying coaching and analytics doesn't matter. I'm also not cherry-picking by pointing out that some pitchers markedly improved after an analytical front office which focused on player development, particularly on the pitching side took over. Unless you expect me to list every failure anytime I want to highlight a success, which is not feasible. Has Falvine had some misses? Of course. But by your definition, since you haven't highlighted any successes, I suppose I could assert that you're simply cherry-picking failures. What are you basing your assertion that Pineda's decline is non-injury related on? You've given no explanation, so I categorically reject it--that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. If you don't understand that Thorpe and Smeltzer were options 7 and 8 for starting this year, and not having them is a big part of why the rotation right now is Ober, Gant, Ryan, Barnes, Albers, etc. than I guess read about the importance of depth? Devin Smeltzer has a career FIP- of 97, meaning he is better than league average--that wouldn't be helpful? Especially considering it's better than any mark Kyle Gibson put up in his Twins career, save 2019? The Kyle Gibson that was supposedly a nice piece for the future in 2016? Also, the plan wasn't to have Duran/Winder/Balazovic throw innings down the stretch--but one of them could have, like Liriano in 2006. What if 6 weeks ago all three of them were performing, and had been healthy the whole year--maybe one of them comes up and has a Joe Ryan like impact. The Twins lost 8-9 of their top 12ish starters to injury at some point this year; perhaps that has had an impact on the terrible pitching?

Cave wishes.

Bro. You got annoyed that I responded directly to an assertion you made, saying I was trying to create an argument. Don't try to shift the goalposts when someone refutes what you say on a message board for crying out loud--that's losing the internet. If we can't agree that the staff Falvine rolled out in 2017 was the staff left them by TR (which is kind of the point you've been making--that Falvine inherited at least the makings of a good staff), then we're approaching the sequentiality of time in completely different ways--I guess you're Billy Pilgrim, and therefore see beyond the linear connection between TR fielding terrible staffs from 2011-2016, with only one decent year in 2015 and 2016 being the worst of all, as somehow not related to the staff Falvine fielded in 2017. You are the one making the assertion that the staff entering 2017 was better than the one we have right now--you then listed a bunch of members of that staff--I'm supposed to somehow infer which ones you see as positives, and which as negatives? You listed Santiago and Colon on your list. No one else brought them up. If their presence in non-consequential or at odds with the point you're trying to make, why include them? The 3 good-not-great bullpen options were not better (at least in 2016) than what we have right now--did you bother to read my post, where I explicitly spoke to that? If so, at least try and make some kind of informed response, not just a re-statement of what you've already said. Thielbar has a 2021 FIP- equal to or better than Pressly, and Kintzler in 2016. Rogers, Gant, Coulombe, and Farrell all have better FIP- this year than all three did in 2016. Duffey and Stashak are better in FIP- than Pressly. You're looking largely at what Pressly and Rogers became when you say they're better, not what they were when 2017 started, which was young, anonymous, potentially good pieces for the bullpen. The fact that Pressly and Rogers have been 2 of the 10 best relievers by FIP- for the last 5 years is because this FO helped them reach their potential. You know, the EXACT point I've been trying to make? Posters on this board have absolutely made the assertion that the players left to Falvine would have become good players no matter what--it's what has fueled the vast majority of the conversation in this thread. This is based on a ridiculous assumption that players are in no way impacted by coaching or analytics, which is akin to saying we shouldn't force people to go to med school to become doctors, since if they're going to be good doctors, that will happen whether they're taught or not. Falvine has, for every year of their tenure, had superior staffs to the entire 2011-2016 regime--as bad as this year's staff is (and it is quite bad) it is still better than what BS/TR ran out there for SIX. STRAIGHT. YEARS. The fact that they were able to fix that in 2-3 offseasons is remarkable. This season has surely been bad on the pitching front, and while some of that is definitely on Falvine, not all of it is (Maeda pitching hurt the entire year then getting mid-season TJ, Pineda injuring himself multiple times, Dobnak hurting his finger, Rogers hurting his finger, Thorpe not able to stay healthy, Smeltzer not able to stay healthy, Duran and Winder both hurting themselves, Balazovic not starting the year healthy, Canterino being constantly injured). That's 10 guys who all could've figured prominently in making this staff better. If Falvine can't show real improvement on the pitching side next year, then I'm willing to believe that 2019/2020 were just good fortune, and we need someone else.

I think he is healthy now (after he missed two months), but he is also not getting consistent playing time (66 PA's since his return on July 25 in 45 games). It's hard to get a rhythm when you're essentially a pinch hitter, or you only play once every 3 days. Before this is construed as a defense of Cave, I agree that he should not be on this team next year. Kiriloff, Larnach, and Celestino should all be ahead of him in the pecking order, to say nothing of Buxton, Arraez moonlighting in left, or Lewis (if he has to get moved to the outfield). My initial post simply was musing about a potential reason that an above average player in 2018/2019 would all of the sudden become a useless one.

Cave has done himself no favors this year by trying to play hurt (if indeed that has been the issue--given the vast difference between his stats in 2019/2020 and this year, I am inclined to believe that). When healthy, I think Jake Cave is a very good 4th outfielder. That said, I don't think 4th outfielders are something a team should have to resort to trades in order to acquire, and they certainly shouldn't give up pitching prospects to do it.