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prouster

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Everything posted by prouster

  1. prouster
    It was mainly the first two weeks of last season that pulled down his total numbers. Without those two weeks, his batting line becomes league average. It's hard to overstate how bad he was out of the gate. Edit: Not saying the rest of April and May were good, just that they were tolerable compared to his first handful of games.
  2. prouster
    Ha, I didn't even notice that. It's...ironic, isn't it?
  3. prouster
    Twins ZiPS projections were posted the other day: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2018-zips-projections-minnesota-twins/. Some interesting numbers, especially for the starting rotation. And I think Buxton will outperform his projected WAR total.
  4. prouster
    They've probably used cell phones and computers to talk to him.
  5. prouster
    None of us can credibly talk about process one way or the other unless we're in the room with either Darvish and his reps or Twins brass. We can certainly talk about who they should sign/trade for/DFA and whatnot, and we can debate moves after the fact, but we can't pretend to know how they are or are not approaching a given transaction. Neither side is going to tell us, and I don't think we should take all that seriously the opinion of a writer whose argument hinges on what he "refuses to believe."
  6. prouster
    It's fallacious to assume people are fervently celebrating low key free agent additions. It's fallacious to assume that the FO is only paying lip service to the idea of improving the team, when their actions say otherwise. It's fallacious to assume that players don't have the final say on who they sign with as free agents. It's also a very different thing to call something a priority and guarantee it as an outcome. Think of New Years resolutions as an example. Saying "I'm going to prioritize my health" is not the same as actually going to the gym and eating healthier foods. But whatever. It's only baseball. My resolution is to not get worked up by others who are worked up.
  7. prouster
    In a vacuum I agree, but I don't think Graham and Haley are good examples. Graham's performance in 2015 was at least tolerable for the 25th guy on the roster (4.95 ERA, 4.69 FIP, 7.5 K/9, 3.0 BB/9). Haley threw 18 innings last year, most of them in mop up duty. The alternative was what? Jason Wheeler? A few more innings of Busenitz? I just don't think it's been an actual issue for the Twins. Going forward, though, they'll need all 25 spots to be productive.
  8. prouster
    Boy, no wonder we're disappointed if that's the standard.
  9. prouster
    I doubt that a guy who has played Major League Baseball for 15 years disrespects the game. I'd wager he's actually quite fond of it. He might even revere it. What body language are you talking about? His delivery? That's the only "body language" I can think of that has anything whatsoever to do with his performance. Good signing. Exciting? Not really, but it's a step in the right direction. The Twins could use more colorful players.
  10. prouster
    It's the middle of December, and all the top starting pitchers are still on the board. A lot of the young hitters took steps forward last year, so I don't think it's asanine or naive or Terry Ryan redux or whatever to expect some development among the young pen arms. Should that be the only plan? No. That's why they signed Rodney and Pineda. The former will obviously pitch sooner, but the latter should be available for a late season pennant run. Again, it's the middle of December. They can still sign someone or make some trades with plenty of time to spare before spring training.
  11. prouster
    I think you mean 2 WAR. Miguel Sano, for example, was worth 0.8 WAA last year. Rosario was -0.3. Berrios, 0.4. They probably shouldn't trade for Gerrit Cole if this is the standard we want to apply. He was only worth 1.1. Chris Archer is also a bum, I guess. -0.6. And I don't get all this fuss about Yu Darvish. He was only worth 0.2.
  12. prouster
    I agree that a team option for 2020 would have been nice, but I don't think it's a mistake there isn't one. For all we know, that was a deal breaker for Piñeda. If he pitches well next year, they can offer him a QO and get a decent draft pick.
  13. prouster
    Are you suggesting they should have signed him to a longer contract? This kind of move isn't unprecedented. Tyson Ross. Kris Medlen. Drew Smyly. Etc.
  14. prouster
    Thank you for the conversation. We disagree on a few of irreconcilable points: 1) what value means 2) whether one must look past a single stat in determining value 3) whether one must account for the margin of error when using the aforementioned stat(s). I really think it's cherry picking to look at WAA and WAA only, when other stats tell a more holistic story. Overall, I like this signing without feeling passionately about it. In essence it's a one year deal, and those basically never hurt teams.
  15. prouster
    That's just not true. Last year he was worth 1.1 fWAR and .7 bWAR in about half a season's worth of starts. 2011: 3.2 fWAR and 2.3 bWAR. 2012 & 2013: did not play. 2014: 2.2 fWAR & 2.7 bWAR. 2015: 3.5 fWAR & 1.7 bWAR. 2016: 3.2 fWAR & 1.2 bWAR. For his career, he has an ERA+ of 101, almost exactly league average. Career FIP of 3.60 and career xFIP of 3.33. Having an opinion is one thing, but it's simply false to say Piñeda has provided negative value. One could say he has been below average in certain areas, but there is indeed still some value in that.
  16. prouster
    Because it's pretty cheap for a solid starting pitcher. Of course, we all know why it's cheap.
  17. prouster
    It seems disingenuous to paint Piñeda as having negative value. He's a solid pitcher when healthy. And any signing is of course up for debate, but running with the assumption that there weren't other suitors seems to conflate opinion with fact. Finally, I'm curious why the order of this and other potential transactions makes a difference. I'm not disputing that it does--the reason just isn't clear to me.
  18. prouster
    Small sample size. Strohman is objectively good.
  19. prouster
    I can't imagine anyone in that clubhouse thinks this is a bad thing. Who wouldn't want Judge and Stanton in the same lineup?
  20. prouster
    Why do you say that?
  21. prouster
    The exact wording in the other post was that there "was no need to try to guess whether the Twins were in a chase for a playoff spot," because they "clearly were." To me, the conclusion is that a playoff spot is an obvious outcome—it should not have come as a surprise. (And not to be pedantic, but I didn't say the other poster "said" anything. I said they "suggested" something, if we want to argue semantics.) I don't know what your definition of consistent is, but it must be different from mine. They hovered around the top of the division for the first two months before nosediving in July. They played extremely well in August, which got them back into the race. At the deadline, they were 4.5 games out of a Wild Card spot and needed to pass four teams to get it. Like I said in my other post, their playoff odds on that day were 5.6% according to Fangraphs. These are all facts, and in my opinion they all justify trading a couple of okay pitchers whose contracts were expiring two months later.
  22. prouster
    That's actually not true. On July 31st, the Twins were 6.5 games out of first place, 4 games behind the Royals for second in the division, and in addition to KC were behind the Orioles, Rays, Mariners, and Red Sox for a Wild Card spot. Their playoff odds were 5.6%. http://www.fangraphs.com/coolstandings.aspx?type=2&lg=div&date=2017-07-31 To suggest that on July 31st a playoff spot was an obvious outcome is revisionist history.
  23. prouster
    I don't know. A ton of things went right that needed to in order to even stay in the WC race, let alone win a playoff spot. If Falvey and Levine could have foreseen what actually happened, they should be working on Wall Street and not in baseball.
  24. prouster
    And even then, they'd have needed something like six more wins to catch up to the Yankees. It seems incredibly unlikely that Garcia and Kintzler would have been enough to make up that much ground.
  25. prouster
    A player's nation of origin has nothing to do with his success or failure in Major Leagur Baseball. Nor does a previous player's nation of origin have anything to do with a later player's success or failure. How many times does this need to be said?
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