d-mac

If he repeats it and we can't afford it, he'd get a king's ransom on the trade market with his original contract. If he does something halfway between 2014 and 2015, then extend him. But if he pulls a 2015, then you have no reason to extend him. Extending players, especially pitchers, after career years is a bad baseball and business decision. End of discussion.

You can add Theofanopoulos and AJ Murray to the list of college players that need to be moved up to high-A.

Ah, I see you beat me to it.

Pitch to Contact

So you're saying the Twins sold cocaine to help finance their failing car company? Irrelevant automotive comparisons aside, the point of my post was just to explore how the top position players in the league last year (some were top prospects, some were not) were handled in regards to time at AAA and compare that to the most recent batch of Twins young position players. I chose the top 15 players in fWAR because I wanted a sample of players that had successfully transitioned to the big leagues (while every player is unique, there has to be common criteria that determines success) and included their speed and defense contributions (vs OPS or wOBA) so I could get a look across different positions and not end up with a group of 1st basemen and corner outfielders. The common take aways- 1. Very few players that had little or no time in AAA and hadn't had a full season at AA and had an OPS above .950. 2. Nearly all players (exception of Davis and Cain) had a BB/K above .80 at both AA and AAA. 3. Only Davis had contact issues in the minors. 4. None of the Twins hitters had a BB/K above .80 5. Only Kepler and Arcia had an OPS at AA above .950 6. Many of the Twins players had contact issues in the minors. In the sample you'll find a mix of teams that are both good and bad when the player was called up. A major league club's current state of affairs shouldn't affect when a player is called up, that is bad player development policy. It puts a young player at a disadvantage when trying to make the most difficult adjustment of his career, even moreso for a hitter with questionable contact skills. And yes, teams do rush players before they're ready- something the Twins appear to be guilty of lately. But Just to humor you, here are the same players, with the team's record at the end of the season in which their first significant callup occurred (excluding cups of coffee min PA=100): 1. Harper- WSN 2012, 98-64 2. Trout- LAA 2012, 89-73 3. Donaldson- OAK 2012, 94-68 4. Goldschmidt- ARI 2011, 94-68 5. Votto- Cin 2008, 74-88 (72-90 in 2007) 6. Machado- BAL 2012, 93-69 7. Cespedes- N/A 8. Pollock- ARI 2013, 81-81 9. Cain- MIL 2010, 77-85 10. Bryant- CHC 2015, 97-65 11. Heyward- ATL 2010, 91-71 12. McCutchen- PIT 2009, 62-99 13. Posey- SF 2010, 92-70 14. Davis- TEX 2008, 79-83 15. Kiermaier- TB 2014, 77-85 Again, another interesting result: The players with the least amount of time in AAA and AA all were on teams with at least 89 or more wins (with the usual exception suspect of Chris Davis). It appears to me that clubs with playoff aspirations are more likely to call up a young position prospect early. Meanwhile, Votto and McCutchen played on the worst teams their first year and both had at least a full season in AAA. This essentially disproves your theory that the players with a lot of time in the high minors because their orgs could afford to wait and/or had a quality player blocking them. When a player deserves to be called up- a club will find a spot for them. I'm sure Pirates and Reds fans were clamoring to see a young Votto and McCutchen called up. And again, this is counter to what the Twins have done lately. They have called up their supposed core of the next winning era far too early, despite not being a serious contender. This smacks of desperation by the front office and/or ownership and is ultimately detrimental to the young prospects.

Not surprising that 4 of 5 players on this list are in the low minors and two of those four are college players in low A ball- one of which was even there last year! There should be no reason that these players shouldn't be promoted once they dominate a level for a month and a half in the low minors- particularly the college draftees. Get them up against better competition and see what they can do. But then be more deliberate with AA and AAA time.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=sa597276&position=P

Unfortunately, I don't know if it can be fixed without attrition of players with potential and sell-low trades.

Who in the world would draft an A-ball pitcher post TJ in the rule 5? Another dumb decision.

Well, like Hosken said above, at least it's data. It doesn't account for the variable of when a player comes up. However, all teams have injuries, are playing the service time game, etc. Assuming that over a large enough sample size, that timing evens out for all teams, then according to this metric, the Twins are indeed bad. The other scenario is that the Twins do things completely different than the other 29 teams when handling pros[ects.

As we're just now finding out, so many of these prospects are being added to the 40-man because they've used up their minor league time before they get to spend much time in AA ball.

Maybe some combination of both? As long as I can remember, even when the farm system was poor, the E-town Twins always have a winning record. My guess is that is because too many college players are in the Appy league, when other teams would have moved them to low A ball (or Short-Season A, which the Twins don't have). Nor do I think it's a typical practice for late round college (hitters and pitchers) to spend a season each in the GCL (generally for recent high school and first state-side stop for young int'l kids) and the Appy league equivalent rookie level.

Thanks! I'm glad my posts are appreciated and adding to the discussion!

Indeed. At some point you have to s*** or get off the pot. And it's not the prospects fault by any stretch of the imagination. The FO clearly lacked a plan with how the roster was going to take shape several years down the road. Now the ones that should be here are blocked and/or moved out of position (Sano, Polanco, May, etc.) and the ones that aren't ready are forced into action because they misjudged their preparedness and didn't have a backup plan (pick an outfielder).

I doubt it's for monetary reasons, generally, the more major league time a player has the more expensive he is- they enter arbitration and free agency sooner. So, bringing up players before they are ready and starting their service clocks early is going to make it very hard to hang on to these players if they end up having success. It's more plausible that they are trying to save face with the public (with the stadium sized elephant in the room) by rushing the kids up here. And that's never good because they'll bust at a higher rate or stunt their upside. Their actions give some credence to this theory- they never committed to a full rebuild after the 2011 season. This is despite TR declaring in the media that "they aren't going to take any shortcuts." You're right, anybody with access to the internet can look up what I did through fangraphs or bbref. So, either the FO are overly confident in their ability to identify and develop talent or they are so insular they haven't realized that player development has changed. it's probably a little of column A, little of column B. As far as options go, when a player is added to the 40 man, any time they are removed from the 25-man roster (sent down for non-injury reasons) they use an option year. The player can go up and down as many times as needed in that year. But there are, I believe, 3 option years. Once those years are used up, a player must be put on waivers to be removed from the 25 man roster. So rushing a player up early, only to bounce back and forth (like Arcia) between MLB and AAA uses up those options and limits roster flexibility. However, a player can only be in an org's minor league system for x number of years before they must be placed on the 40-man or be eligible for the Rule 5 Draft.

Yeah I was surprised, too, with some of what I found. The common refrain from many of the traditional prospect guys tends to be that AAA just isn't important for the development of prospects and is just a repository for replacement level players. Just based on the research I've done for fantasy baseball and following prospects the past few years is that this hasn't been how teams have treated AAA for 10 years now. Teams are very deliberate with the amount of time hitters spend in AA and AAA and will make the prospect prove they can control the strike zone while putting up a high OPS. Conversely, this is more from anecdotal evidence (I'm not going to research this -it'll take just way too long), but most teams tend to move their prospects fairly quickly through rookie and A ball, especially players drafted out of college. This makes since, because each step between rookie and A+ is fairly small. A+-AA, then AAA-MLB are extremely huge jumps. The Twins force full season stops at Rookie ball, A ball, and A+ (even for college hitters that dominate inferior competition), while pushing hitters fairly quickly from A+ to the majors. I hope I'm wrong here, but after doing this research I'm fairly worried that many of the Twins young players are on the Chris Davis path. Sure, Davis turned into an elite power hitter, but only after several seasons of getting shuffled between AAA and MLB and changing orgs. And he still has strikeout issues. The last Twins position player to come up that had significant playing time in AAA was Trevor Plouffe and before that Denard Span. Yeah, Ben Revere and Dozier with little time at AAA came up and hit fairly quickly, but Revere also had elite contact ability (probably too good for his lack of power) and Dozier is likely a product of Target Field.

I can't disagree with any of this. I would have stuck Plouffe in RF and kept Sano at 3rd. But your analysis of Molitor is spot on. All of the issues I had with Gardy and doubts about him leading the youth movement Molitor has and even to a more extreme extent.

In my lengthy research post above, I came to a similar conclusion, the Twins hitters were rushed through AA and AAA without dominating and/or showing solid plate discipline.

Not anymore. Only the elite of elite hitting prospects (with plus contact skills) skip or breeze through AAA. It's more common for pitchers, since the learning curve from AA to MLB is less steep. Let's examine some of the top hitters in baseball last year and how many plate appearances in AAA they had before they became established, ordered by fWAR: 1. Harper 84 (Elite of the Elite had only 147 PAs in AA, probably best hitting prospect of all time) 2. Trout 93 (Elite of the Elite, 412 PA in AA) 3. Donaldson 1,085 (two stints in AAA) 4. Goldschmidt - no AAA (Elite contact/plus power tools as prospect after a full season 1.000+ OPS in AA and almost a 1:1 BB/K rate) 5. Votto- 580 6. Machado- no AAA (Solid BB/K rate during a FULL season in AA, then took 3 years to establish in MLB) 7. Cespedes- N/A Cuba 8. A.J. Pollock- 478 9. Lorenzo Cain- 672 (Several stints, appeared to have injury issues early on) 10. Kris Bryant- 330 (Half season at AA- OPS'd 1.160 in AA and 1.038 in AAA) 11. Jason Heyward- None- (First player on the list handled in a way the Twins have handled their youth- start season at A+- end at AA, start next year with ML club. But in a little more than a third of a season Heyward OPS'd 1.057 with a 1.47 BB/K rate.) 12. McCutchen- 785 13. Buster Posey- 359 (interestingly skipped AA, but had a nearly 1:1 K:BB ratio and an OPS in the mid .900 combined in A+ and AAA) 14. Chris Davis- 975 (only 202 PA in AA, 127 in AAA before initial call-up. Then it took three more full seasons of back and forth between MLB and AAA and another organization before he established himself). 15. Kevin Kiermaier- 309 (after a full season at AA). Based on my observations most players had significant playing time in AAA (some even spent a full season or more in AAA! Although many had a "cup of coffee" in sandwiched in their AAA time). The ones that breezed through or skipped AAA had FULL seasons in AA (solid April through Sept for one year), with OPS's .950+ and BB/K of at least .80. Exceptions were of course Trout, Harper (duh!), Cain (injuries), Heyward (hit and had elite BB/K rates), and Chris Davis (struggled to establish himself). Contrast that to the Twins' top hitting prospects: 1. Sano- no AAA (two half seasons in AA w/ OPS in low .900's, BB/K ~0.50) 2. Buxton- 59 (Half season at AA with OPS .849, poor BB/K rates in both AA and AAA) 3. Rosario- 100 (Two half stints at AA because of suspension. OPS of .742, .672 in AA; .659 in AAA- poor BB/K rates at all stops) 4. Arcia- 155 (Half season in AA. Had OPS of .955 in AA, 1.020 in AAA, ~0.5 BB/K at both stops) 5. Vargas- No AAA- (3/4 season in AA with .832 OPS and 0.63 BB/K) 6. Santana- 105 (full season at AA, then an OPS .692, 0.21 BB/K rate at AAA) 7. Kepler- 110 (full season at AA) 8. Polanco- 148 (3/4 season at AA, two disjointed stints in AAA) It appears the Twins' handling of their hitting prospects run counter to what most other teams have done with developing talent, even the elite hitting prospects. Many did not have a full season in AA, then had only a token appearance in AAA. While only Arcia and Kepler have shown any dominance of AA with an OPS in the mid .900's or higher. And only Kepler had a BB/K over .80. Most of the hitters have had poor BB/K rates in AA and AAA. The Twins have rushed their hitters through the upper minors and not put them in a position to succeed. Even Mike Trout had more AA and AAA plate appearances than Buxton had before he was up full time, and Trout had a much better developed hit tool at the same stage.

He's 25. He relies primarily on triple digit heat for outs. Based on his age he's at his peak velocity, and will start dropping as he gets closer to 30. If the Twins want to maximize his value, they need him up ASAP. I don't know what else he has left to prove.

Meanwhile in AAA... JT Chargois has an ERA of 0, 70% K%, and a FIP of -1.78. It's only 4.1 innings, but still. By my math, between AA and AAA this year, he has 16 innings, a 40% K%, and a FIP of 1.79, and a WHIP of 1.00.

Talk about hindsight! If you're using nearly decade old prospect rankings to justify an unjustifiable contract extension, those are some pretty acrobatic mental gymnastics.

Hell, unless you're the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox most teams can't afford to do business like that!

No, Nick is just wrong about this. It is a bad baseball decision to extend a player (especially a pitcher!!) after a career year when there are two more years under contract. At least wait one more year to see if he can repeat his performance.

This is sort of where I am with this too. While I agree we need to go with the youth movement, there is no reason they should be up here if they aren't ready to be. Also, put May in the freaking rotation... My God.