twinstalker

They just traded Nimmala plus for Soriano, and they weren't going to do anything that wasn't Culpepper (who's not ranked as high) plus another good prospect, of which the Twins only have, imo, Quick. Toronto knows what it's doing. Not so sure about the Twins.

It's worse without Reyes and Hill (and Pena) by a good margin.

What catcher prospects? You mean the ones they can't trade until the WS is over? If the Twins let Houston or Culpepper get in the way of dealing for Neto, they're not very smart. He's got three years after this of team control.

I though he was going to be pretty good, but I wasn't researching prospects as heavily then.

I don't know about that. We have two guys who are/were somewhat old for being promising hitting in bandboxes. If we had any chance of trading one of them as the main piece for Neto, we screwed up. I'm okay not trading Jenkins, but I think Jenkins is 10x the player Culpepper is, 20x what Houston is.

I don't think the Twins could be as dumb as the Tigers were, or at least I hope not. Hope is not a great prospect (yes, ranking services make mistakes, even the same mistakes over and over). River is okay but old, the other is a potential reliever. Milwaukee offered up Luis Pena plus, and that means the Tigers screwed up. So I don't know what you mean, really. Do you mean we could get Luis Pena? Deal.

Walker JenkinsVahn LackeyKaelen CulpepperRiley QuickEduardo TaitHendry MendezCharlee SotoKhadim DiawGabriel GonzalezMarek HoustonEthan WachsmannBrett RenfrowJames EllwangerEmmanuel RodriguezRyan GallagherCJ CulpepperJason ReitzEnrique JimenezBrandon WinokurRicardo Olivar

I wouldn't be too sure about Crane nixing the Abreu deal. I think it's more likely Dana Brown had buyer's remorse, and it would make him look really bad to back out of a deal he'd agreed to. Bring in the owner at that point to be the bad guy. I highly doubt the owner is going to involve himself in a platoon player for setup reliever swap on his own.

The most important predictive stat is K rate. Why wouldn't you include Ks here like normal? I realize you're looking at how well they did, but it makes a big difference to the reader to know whether this means anything. That is, you can place a non-prospect like K. Rosario in here and celebrate what a great hitter he is in the minors, but by ignoring all his strikeouts, you mislead the reader. I like this feature, and it's fun, but ultimately I don't care if someone's a great hitter for Cedar Rapids if I can't see it in a predictive context. It would be like including on ERA for the pitchers but not walks, strikeouts, and homers allowed. Yeah, these pitchers were the best of the month because they allowed the fewest runs. Not really helpful for what we're really interested in. Thanks.

Houston is the most overrated prospect here.

Ignorance is bliss, and I'm not trying to be mean. The Twins gave up far more in Hill than any other team would for Hoffman. The Pirates got Weaver for arguably less, and Weaver is a ton better than Hoffman at the same dollar amount or less.

They lose an extra year of control from early August to late August? These are some fancy new rules. An Aug 1 call-up gets about 60 days of service time, A Sep 1 call-up gets about 30 days. If they continue to be on the active roster forever after, they have six years after this year of team control. In both cases. Now once you start talking about demotions, then yeah, to get under a year of service time by the end of next year, the Aug 1 promotion has to be demoted for 30-ish days more than the Sep 1 promotion. But rookie status doesn't matter in the least wrt service time. It does matter for ROY and the new incentives pertaining to keeping the player up (only Jenkins is a realistic candidate for that, then Lackey).

To be clear, Ramos' expected WAR when they traded him was not horribly far from that number, and Capps was also around his number, so that will go down as one of the worst trades in the 21st century, not just on the Twins. As much as I like Hill and Reyes, their combined expected WAR isn't remotely close to Ramos' at the time of the trade. Hoffman and Kremer's combined number might be less than Capps', but it might be close. Also, the Twins were going to win the division and didn't need a mediocre to average reliever to get them there. They thought "closer" meant something when it didn't/doesn't mean jack. So not only did they make a hugely bad trade, they made it under pretenses that as false as could be.

This is the same for Kremer and, due to salary and rental, Minter, too. The Twins got three pretty bad players and gave up a healthy amount for that. What they did get are guys who've pitched before. Way, way, way too much to give up for this all. Hill and Reyes are two of the less than 7-8 guys I wouldn't give up for anything but a great return. Pena is probably nothing, but I wouldn't give him up as a throw-in for this kind of value. It's a pretty ugly deadline. Did the Twins get what they needed? Probably not, and that answer should be an easy yes for Reyes, Hill, and Pena.

I wonder if Zoll is feeling violated right now. I had a lot more descriptive ways I wanted to say this, but I think I'd be at risk if I did.