Article: Chasing An Ace

[gocgo]

There's an incremental value to having an ace.  Now, instead of Gibson going against another clubs #1, he's going against their 2 or their 3 if Santana is the 2.  It can have a cascading effect on your pitching rotation.  That said, don't trade for it in the off season.  If you trade for an ace, do it in July.

[Shane Wahl]

It's time to really get serious about converting some of these minor league starters into relievers. I mean this ranges from Pat Dean to Taylor Rogers, too. Rogers has multiple pitches and hits 92-93 with regularity. That could jump to Trevor May velocity in the bullpen. As a lefty.

 

Duffey *might* end up there too.

[Rosterman]

If a team has the money, you gamble. This last season, the Twins put a lot of money into their rotation. They lost, but the team did better than recent years. Go figure. You always run the risk of a bad investment (that is what you have analytics and scouts for, right). You have to be willing eat a certain amount of salary every season. They did it with Joe Mays, to a lesser extent Nick Blackburn, once for Joe Nathan. It happens. Be prepared to not have your "superstars" on the field. It is the longterm eating of a contract that literally sucks. 

 

Do you trade prospects? Same issue. How many prospects in the Top 20 make it to the majors. How many actually play in the majors for any extended amount of time. A quick look at the past decade of Twin draftees shows that you are lucky if 5-6 guys make the majors, and not necessarily with your own team. And here is another area that you are spending good money and not getting the results that you may want.

 

Ultimately, my definition of a top of the order sarter, or an Ace, is someone who consistently year-after-year gives you starts and innings (preferably 200 these days) and keeps you in the game. I have never totally embraced the idea of having your "ace" start against another team's ace, especially in, say, the playoffs or World Series. One of these "aces" has to lose. You might do better having your next guy pitch against their ace and have your ace come back against a lesser pitcher. A year long battle of aces could have one guy with a 20-10 record and a 2.98 ERA and the other with a 10-20 record and a 2.99 ERA, 

 

How much is that worth? 

 

I have also been a firm believer that you do develop your own talent and when that talent produces for you, you reward them with contracts and salary for what they are doing and have done. When you pay out outrageous monies based on what someone ahs done with another team (different home park, different offense, different bullpen) you are paying for soemthing that will go bust more often than not. At least when that homegrown talent busts, you can tell yourself you were underpaying them in early years.

 

Looking at the Twins in 2015, what would it have been like to have David Price on the mound with the team? Would he been equally successful? Are a pitchers numbers like Grienke skewed because he faces a pitcher as a batter in the National League?  Would we rather have three $15 million dollar pitchers and have one go down than one $25 million pitcher who goes down (and, yes, we had three that did partial work last season, I know). 

 

In the game of baseball, someone wins, someone loses. Your best and their best still results in someone not winning.

 

 

[kab21]

 

Oh?  You have some evidence of that?

 

I see plenty of variation.  There are plenty of aces that struggle and lots of the Ryan Vogelsongs of the world.  If you have some sort of mass study on it I'd love to see it.  Otherwise it's easy to see just from pulling up this playoff year (and it's true for most you look at) that being the "ace" of your staff doesn't mean you won't be outperformed badly by dudes like Marco Estrada.  Every postseason is littered with dud performances by aces and surprising #3 guys that carry their team.

 

And it shouldn't be a surprise.  The playoffs are just a grandiose small sample themselves.

You really don't think that better pitchers outperform average pitchers if you use several years of playoff data (to get enough sample size)?

 

Using your argument the Twins should not bother to look for great hitters because Plouffe or Rosario will go on a Daniel Murphy tear and be better than a Miguel Cabrera level hitter.  Of course there will be 10 game stretches where Plouffe is a better hitter than MCab but if you combine 20 Plouffe level hitters over 10 game stretches then you will find that the elite hitters were decidedly better.

 

The playoffs are a small sample size but that doesn't mean that you can expect a Marco Estrada level pitcher to outperform a Price level pitcher going forward.

[TheLeviathan]

 

You really don't think that better pitchers outperform average pitchers if you use several years of playoff data (to get enough sample size)?

 

Using your argument the Twins should not bother to look for great hitters because Plouffe or Rosario will go on a Daniel Murphy tear and be better than a Miguel Cabrera level hitter.  Of course there will be 10 game stretches where Plouffe is a better hitter than MCab but if you combine 20 Plouffe level hitters over 10 game stretches then you will find that the elite hitters were decidedly better.

 

The playoffs are a small sample size but that doesn't mean that you can expect a Marco Estrada level pitcher to outperform a Price level pitcher going forward.

 

Well, that wasn't my argument at all.  My argument (and it was stated pretty clearly) was that the best thing you can do is upgrade your 25 man roster and you should do that however the availability of talent allows you to do that.  Don't fall over yourself for one position, but do what adds the most for the money you have.  So no, that entire middle paragraph is a strawman.

 

And I don't "think" this is true.  The stats say it's true.  Pull up the playoff stats for pitchers and see for yourself.  Here are the three best starters from the last few years:

 

2015 - Estrda, Kuechel, Kershaw   (Worst: Hammel, Cueto, Price)

2014 - Bumgarner, Lynn, Ventura  (Worst: Shields, Kershaw, Peavy)

2013 - Lester, Lackey, Verlander (Worst: Buchholz, Lynn, Peavy)

2012 - Vogelsong, Fister, Sanchez (Worst: Bumgarner, Wainwright, Gonzalez)

2011 - Carpenter, Colby Lewis, Gallardo (Worst: Grienke, Verlander, Scherzer)

2010 - Lewis, Bumgarner, Lincecum (Worst: Sabathia, Hunter, Sanchez)

 

It's all over the map. (Approximations) Guys go back and forth, in and out, every year.  Colby Lewis twice kicked the crap out of the playoffs.  Ryan Vogelsong pretty much won a World Series himself.  Guys who are good often suck terribly.  Sometimes they're as great as advertised, sometimes not.  The same goes with hitters for that matter.

 

The point is that there is no silver bullet.  The best thing you can do is field the best 25 man roster you can and not worry about how many aces you have.  Spend what you have available to make as robust a team as you can, you never know who is going to step up and be the hero if you have enough capable dudes on your team.

[DaveW]

I'm not sure you need a true "ace" to win, but you need better pitchers than what the Twins have now to win (or a kick ass offense that would make Brad Childress blush)

[Shane Wahl]

For what it's worth, the only players I am interested (and who have value) in trading in the org are:

 

Trevor Plouffe, Kurt Suzuki, Tommy Milone, Josmil Pinto, Kennys Vargas, Casey Fien, Kohl Stewart, Travis Harrison, Levi Michael, and Danny Ortiz.

 

Catcher, setup man, and top 10% starting pitcher are the only real MLB positions I would be interested in getting, anyone else being prospects.

 

[Thrylos]

 

Catcher, setup man, and top 10% starting pitcher are the only real MLB positions I would be interested in getting, anyone else being prospects.

 

Top 10% SP is a very tall order.  Here is the math:  30 teams, lets say 7 SP each = 210 SP in the majors.  Top 10% means up to number 21.    Here are the SPs ranked by xFIP in the majors in 2015 (100 IP + so you take care of the 6th and 7th pitchers of each team.  And need a rate measurement like xFIP and not  a cumulative one like WAR.)

 

Greinke, Price and Harvey are ranked 19th-21st, so they round up that 10%.  (Highest ranked Twins' pitcher was Gibson at 66 FWIW.)   SIERA is probably a bit better measurement and the results you get are pretty similar.  

Where it gets interesting is that even with the 100 IP, the total list is 133 pitchers, which is much less that 6 or 7 by each team.  (so the cuttoff for top 10% is 13...  Tough list.)  To get a bit more realistic sample size, you have to drop all the way to 50 IP where you get 186 SP and the top 10% is 19.  

 

Still very tough list that top 10%   (but the Mets have 3, which tells you a lot for the reasons they are there.)

 

(highest Twins in that latest exercise are Tyler Duffey at 53 and Trevor May at 57.  More like top 30%  Gibson Drops at 93 (50th percentile) and Hughes and Santana are in the 65th-75th percentile.

 

 

 

 

[ashbury]

  Here are the SPs ranked by xFIP in the majors in 2015

Ay caramba. None of these guys have much of a chance of being pried away. Even going further down the list into the 30s and it's tough to imagine... until I come to the name Sonny Gray. Shades of another TD thread.

[Thrylos]

 

Ay caramba. None of these guys have much of a chance of being pried away. Even going further down the list into the 30s and it's tough to imagine... until I come to the name Sonny Gray. Shades of another TD thread.

 

To me the most interesting name in that list is Pineda.  His ERA and W-L was mediocre, and really did not produce in NY.  Wonder if someone like Dozier might be interesting to them as a bait enough to center a trade around those 2...

[DocBauer]

It helps the odds to add better players, that's for sure.  The problem is that people believe that having an ace is a prerequisite for even being considered a contender.   The Twins need a better 25 man roster and there are many ways to skin that cat.

 

Personally, right now, I don't think all in on an ace is the way to go.  Ride the excellent fielding outfield, pay up for Chris Davis, and find a way to upgrade the catching spot.  Let the kids play.

I really like this post!

 

My one concern with moving Plouffe is the high potential but tenuous OF situation for 2016. Like Leviathan, I believe Buxton should be in CF. Great defense, tremendous tools and potential...he can learn a bit on the fly. (I believe his 2015 experience and talent will allow him to do so) Rosario is obviously in left. And until Kepler is ready, Hicks, or possibly Hicks/Arcia can man RF. I still wouldn't mind a veteran LH bat for a bench role, but that's a rather small piece vs a larger discussion here.

 

But if the Twins are truly intent in their belief of placing Buxton in Rochester to begin the year, and Plouffe IS traded, then DH and RF becomes a whole lot more tenuous. A Davis signing provides another high quality hitter for the DH spot, improves and deepens the lineup, and you mow don't miss Plouffe. (Or Hunter's 22 HR for that matter)

 

Add a reliever from both sides of the mound, and this team looks really good to me for 2016 with some very talented milb depth in the wings.