Article: Twins First Half Summary: Murphy's Law

[TheLeviathan]

 

It's also quite damning that his OPS has been on the upswing since they stopped telling him to put on an outfielder's glove.

 

Yeah, it's funny how.....miracle of miracles!.....when you put a 22 year old in his best position to succeed he suddenly starts, I don't know, succeeding!  

 

This issue has been the fundamental issue with player development.  Yeah, players are struggling...but the front office's approach to how they use them has been a huge element in that.

[Blackjack]

 

 

 

But you can't fire players, so...

 

But you can trade them.  They helped dig this hole, if trading them helps the Twins in the long term, do it, don't worry about hurting their feelings, etc.  Most players, when they hit free agency are going to do whats best for themselves, as in 'show me the money'.

[Taildragger8791]

 

Management signed the players and is responsible for overseeing their development. 'Blaming' players is just an indirect way of blaming the actual culprits in the front office.

 

Have the Twins been somewhat unlucky? Sure. Fangraphs projects them as 'only' the 6th worst MLB team the rest of the way. But when you enter the season with, say, Ricky Nolasco in the rotation, and Sano out of position, and so forth, you are not going to be resilient in the face of some bad luck. 

 

MLB is just too competitive to mishandle injuries, call ups, and other moves on a regular basis and expect to come out unscathed. 

 

I was about to say the same thing before I saw your comment, so instead I'll highlight it.

 

If a few veterans underperform or fail then you can reasonably lay most of the blame on those players. If they all struggle or fail then maybe they weren't as good as you thought to begin with. That has to shift some blame to the front office and coaching.

 

Similarly, if a few marginal prospects don't make it then you can blame it on them being marginal prospects. But when nearly all your top prospects keep falling off a cliff then it again points to the front office and the coaching. Either they are picking talent poorly, they are developing it poorly, or the players were pulled out of the oven half-baked to try and cover up other roster mistakes.

[Dantes929]

 

This is true, but I think the Sano example is not a good one. If I was asked by my employer to perform a job that I was simply not qualified to do (RF), and I tried and night in and night out looked like a fool in front of 15,000 people....my performance in other areas would suffer too. I bet he puts up a better second half if he sees time exclusively at 3B and DH.

I bet he puts up better numbers even if he stayed in right field.    I also did not see anything on Trevor May but his absence has been huge.    I put this season some on bad luck, some on management and by far the most on the players either in their poor performance or inability to stay healthy.   I guess injuries could be considered bad luck especially when a guy like Plouffe starts bad and then gets in a groove only to get hurt.    Good luck is when he gets hurt while playing bad.  Bad luck is when he gets hurt while starting to get hot.    After last season how do you no rely on Rosario, Escobar, Sano and Dozier to play well?    Sure, Perkins was a risk and the pen was a bit thin but Jepsen and May should have been solid.  Instead they haven't just given us nothing.  They blew 5 or 6 games early that helped set the tone for the season.   That's worse than nothing!   Surely it wouldn't have been unreasonable that May and Jepsen could have closed out a few games.  If they did their jobs then Abad, Tonkin, Pressly, Ramirez and Rogers are not such bad support staff.   Fien has a 2.33 ERA in 16 appearances with the Dodgers.     How is it the management's fault that he had a 7.9 ERA with the Twins?     Santana, Duffey and Gibson have started to show us what happens when they are healthy and pitching well.  Why would anyone think they would give us nothing in the first 75 games?   Milone had a sub 4 ERA in 100 starts.    I had no problem in giving him the shot.   After the last two years why would anyone think that Berrios would completely lose his command?     I do blame the Twins for messing with Duffey and not starting the season with him out there.     Even with the real and imagined deficiencies in management it is still not too hard to imagine Sano, Rosario, Escobar, Buxton, Mauer, May, Jepsen, Duffey, Santana, Gibson, Arcia, Hughes,, Berrios, Dozier, Plouffe and Suzuki having good seasons or good starts to the season.    NONE of these guys performed well.    How can the team possibly succeed when Kepler and Nunez are the only bright spots to the season?    They should have just been nice side stories to a winning team.    Twins have gotten better each month (faint praise) and I expect that to continue.     There is more talent on this team than in the past.    I certainly put it on the players that they are dong worse than the last 5 years.  

[Elliot]

I attended my first game of the year yesterday and came away with a number of impressions; one that I want to focus on. For the entire year there has been ongoing discussion of the "Sano in right field" plan. Although I was never a big fan of the move, I supported it since it was clearly the lesser of two evils. Now the greater evil has come into view. Miguel Sano is not now, nor will he ever be, a third baseman. I was always baffled by the statement that he is too big and not athletic enough to play right field, but he could somehow slot nicely in at third base. Equally baffling was the injury concern. A hamstring strain is more likely for a DH than an outfielder due to the relative inactivity between at bats. However; the more serious injury concern involves the likelihood that Sano will take a ground ball to the face if he stays there much longer. Although he was able to catch a pop up without damage to his noggin, he did manage to display on two different plays why he does not belong anywhere in the infield other than first base. The first was a base hit grounded between Sano and Nunez. I was seated part way down the first base line so I had a perfect view as the ball eluded both. It was catchable for both; but both simply missed it. I am giving Nunez a free pass since I don’t think anyone is seriously considering him as a long term shortstop; simply a stopgap for now. The second misplay was a potential double play ball to Sano. I am not sure what he was trying to do, but although it was hit almost directly at him he somehow managed to not only botch the play, but not even come close to fielding the ball. Fortunately it bounced harmlessly into left field. Had it been at his head I seriously doubt that he could have defended himself. Miguel Sano is the future of the Twins. He is too young to be slotted into a full time DH role, but he only has one place on the field where he can play and that is first base. Fortunately, I think he has the skill set to not only succeed, but potentially be a very good defensive player there. Unfortunately that spot is filled by a catcher who needs to return to catching, retire, or take up a utility role, all of which would be good roles for a .280 hitter with little power or speed.

[PopRiveter]

 

How does "everything has gone wrong" differ from "there has been totally bad luck", other than semantics? 

Luck- noun success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.

 

"Everything has gone wrong" simply comments on the result without addressing the cause. 

 

In short, "Luck" asserts a cause. "Everything has gone wrong" describes a result. 

 

Some previous commenters have stated in various ways that that the front office positioned the team to fail. A front office makes a plan, that's all any front office ever does. Failure or success depends on the players performing.

 

Seth's article isn't about whether the front office made a good plan, it is simply addressing how the first half of the season played out. It was not good, followed by really not good, wrapped in a coating of super not good.

 

We can all draw the conclusion that this was the result of a bad plan or the result of "Luck" or the result of a series of poor performances. Seth didn't try to decide that for us.

 

Bravo Seth! I appreciate your writing. You dignify your reader.

[Mike Sixel]

So, everything going wrong.......you actually believe, since the odds of that are so small that they are hard to calculate....you think bad luck had nothing to do with that? I'm struggling why this is even debatable, frankly. Even a terrible plan can have some good outcomes.....this has had almost none. 

[Taildragger8791]

 

You're at least partially right, maybe even mostly right... But you're polarizing the issue far more than it should be polarized.

 

Yes, the front office banked on some pretty bad ideas. They didn't assemble a competent bullpen. They added Park. They put Sano in RF. Those were bad ideas.

 

But they had to rely on the young players to step forward. To a man, that did not happen until a few weeks ago when Kepler was the first (only) to step forward. Half a dozen young players crapped the bed simultaneously. Nearly half a season of (virtually) team-wide regression. No team will ever win under those circumstances.

 

So, yeah, mistakes were made. The front office needs to own those mistakes (and their reluctance to do so has been extremely frustrating)... But sometimes, you need to roll the dice on young players. Had the Twins gone out and signed 3-4 mediocre vets, we would have screamed bloody murder because we've seen the team try that already and it failed.

 

That's fair. I certainly didn't want more vets other than for the bullpen and catcher, and I supported playing the young players who were ready. Yet when you look at this roster it wasn't particularly well built to do that. Plouffe displaced Sano, May displaced to the bullpen, Polanco can't crack the roster, Arcia pushed off the roster completely, no backup for Buxton and Rosario if they need to go down, etc. These are moves of a team thinking it can win and compete now, but then again the lack of offseason moves conflicts with that. The whole division went out and got better and we stood still with an awkward roster overflowing with dead weight vets mixed with really young players. It's tough to buy that Terry had zero opportunities to clean that up a little. And waiting 3-4 years for all the bad contracts to run out isn't realistic.

 

The confusion regarding the plan or expectation for this year is where my frustration is largely stemming from. We went for a middle-of-the-road approach which seems to be taking us nowhere. Thankfully it appears the team is starting to prioritize the youth over vets, so hopefully they stick with that plan for the rest of the year.

[alarp33]

 

I attended my first game of the year yesterday and came away with a number of impressions; one that I want to focus on. For the entire year there has been ongoing discussion of the "Sano in right field" plan. Although I was never a big fan of the move, I supported it since it was clearly the lesser of two evils. Now the greater evil has come into view. Miguel Sano is not now, nor will he ever be, a third baseman. I was always baffled by the statement that he is too big and not athletic enough to play right field, but he could somehow slot nicely in at third base. Equally baffling was the injury concern. A hamstring strain is more likely for a DH than an outfielder due to the relative inactivity between at bats. However; the more serious injury concern involves the likelihood that Sano will take a ground ball to the face if he stays there much longer. Although he was able to catch a pop up without damage to his noggin, he did manage to display on two different plays why he does not belong anywhere in the infield other than first base. The first was a base hit grounded between Sano and Nunez. I was seated part way down the first base line so I had a perfect view as the ball eluded both. It was catchable for both; but both simply missed it. I am giving Nunez a free pass since I don’t think anyone is seriously considering him as a long term shortstop; simply a stopgap for now. The second misplay was a potential double play ball to Sano. I am not sure what he was trying to do, but although it was hit almost directly at him he somehow managed to not only botch the play, but not even come close to fielding the ball. Fortunately it bounced harmlessly into left field. Had it been at his head I seriously doubt that he could have defended himself. Miguel Sano is the future of the Twins. He is too young to be slotted into a full time DH role, but he only has one place on the field where he can play and that is first base. Fortunately, I think he has the skill set to not only succeed, but potentially be a very good defensive player there. Unfortunately that spot is filled by a catcher who needs to return to catching, retire, or take up a utility role, all of which would be good roles for a .280 hitter with little power or speed.

 

He played SS/3B his entire career, he had never played OF.  That is why people were confused about throwing him into RF.  

 

I'm not sure your example of a misplay means a whole lot to be honest.  He will misplay some balls, all ML 3rd baseman do.  He's been pretty decent over there for now, and I don't think anyone believes it is his long term position, but its where he likely will and should play the majority of the time the next couple of seasons.  

[Winston Smith]

Terry certainly has bad luck as he continues to sign or trade for players that aren't as good as he thinks.

[troyhobbs]

Any defense of the FO is crazy. Picking up Nunez might be TR's crowning achievement during his post Bill Smith era tenure. He's been on the bad end of so many deals there is not another professional organization on the planet that would allow him to keep his job. He's gotta go, nothing personal, but Pohlad needs to man up and do what is necessary.......

[70charger]

 

How does "everything has gone wrong" differ from "there has been totally bad luck", other than semantics? 

 

Read what I wrote again. I acknowledge bad luck. But your interpretation that "it's all bad luck" is badly twisting the facts and putting words into the author's mouth. Bad luck is one component. Don't zero in on it as though there's nothing else there.

[Mike Sixel]

 

Read what I wrote again. I acknowledge bad luck. But your interpretation that "it's all bad luck" is badly twisting the facts and putting words into the author's mouth. Bad luck is one component. Don't zero in on it as though there's nothing else there.

 

ah, then we are in agreement, and we are talking past each other. Got it. Probably on my end, I'm more working today than normal....

[Han Joelo]

I agree with what Seth and a couple of commenters have articulated.  Particularly the idea that it may not have been the best plan, or it was one that was fraught with potential for disaster, but of all possible outcomes, what we've witnessed has been as bad as an outcome as could possibly be expected.

 

On the other hand, to put it in extremist, internet-speak, it seems some people are on record as having said "I told you this wasn't a World Series winning team.  Therefore I predicted the team would be this bad."

[Lefty]

I don't know what kind of leash TR has on him as far as spending goes, but it's time to stop spending on mediocre pitchers that he thinks our staff can get some extra out of.  If you want to win, you need STARTING pitchers.  Not these guys.  The Twins have hired Twins guys to run this team forever, and the pool has gotten stale.  It's time for some new blood.  I think the young pieces can still develop.  I agree with what someone else said on here earlier though, the vets and the leadership that the club has needs to be flushed so that a new mindset can be developed.  This team need to either bring in vets to lead that movement or let these young guys lead.  Vets need to go, from the top down.

[70charger]

 

ah, then we are in agreement, and we are talking past each other. Got it. Probably on my end, I'm more working today than normal....

 

It's also possible that I'm not very articulate. I suppose I could try again.

 

There are roughly four million things that have gone wrong this year, and bad luck is one of them. With this article, Seth has not - in my view - placed all the blame on bad luck, and merely listing the things that have gone wrong is not tantamount to saying that they've all gone wrong for the same reason.

 

Acknowledgement of the bad things that have happened, or even of the role of bad luck within that set of bad things, is not the same as claiming that you know exactly why they've happened, and it doesn't let anyone off the hook. Interpreting this article as saying something like "it's all bad luck, so let's not blame the front office," is twisting words.

[Mike Sixel]

Fair, and I did put an asterisk in my comment and say "if he's saying that", which I doubted he was........It is clearly a combination of many, many things, as the owner so accurately put it a few weeks ago.

[70charger]

 

Fair, and I did put an asterisk in my comment and say "if he's saying that", which I doubted he was........It is clearly a combination of many, many things, as the owner so accurately put it a few weeks ago.

 

Yes you did. And I wasn't directing my initial post particularly at you. In any case, we aren't really disagreeing, so it's cool.

[gocgo]

Imagine if Nunez, Kepler, and Grossman hadn't gone right.

[Teflon]

I miss the old days when you could just turn on the blowers at the Metrodome when the Twins were batting and make up for most of this stuff.  

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Imagine if Nunez, Kepler, and Grossman hadn't gone right.

Imagine if everything else hadn't gone wrong.

[Platoon]

Murphy had a lot of help from the FO. You can't keep Plouffe if you expect Park to succeed, and if you don't expect Park to succeed, don't sign him. Sano is a generational talent, Plouffe is not. Hedging all your bets makes mediocrity guaranteed. The Park signing was insanity for this team. But once you did, Plouffe just plain had to go. It was the first domino tipped, towards Mr. Murphy. I won't go into the SP, that is such a jumble, I don't think a coompetent GM could fix it in less than a year. One last thought. The Twins expected a group of average players to all be at their peaks at the same time. Dozier to be first half BD, Plouffe to be a main stick They expected a guy who hit AA pitching in Korea and struck out at an ABW rate to fill the power gap, Suzuki to be AS Kurt again, etc. That's not Mr. Murphys Fault, it's that other Irish guys fault.

[Riverbrian]

I want to go on record once again and say... That if Terry Ryan would have done exactly what I wanted him to do in the off season... This team would probably still be in bad shape. As strongly as I feel about anything... I really believe it's possible that I don't have enough information. 

 

I just want to make sure that everyone knows that I'm not down on Terry Ryan for not doing what I thought he should do instead.

 

However... I also want everyone to know that I don't run a baseball organization for living and I don't have a scouting department staffed with professionals who feed me valuable information to filter through... I don't have numbers guys who feed me numbers to filter through. I don't have the time or the information to go over everything that needs to be gone over because I don't do this for a full time job. 

 

Terry Ryan has all of that... he is in charge of which advisers stay and which advisers go. Which advisers to listen to and which ones have to go the extra mile to prove their case. 

 

The decisions made this year have been wrong almost across the board. There are only 30 of these jobs in the entire world. 

 

I think Terry Ryan has been a loyal Twin and that makes him a teammate of mine as the teams biggest fan... but... bottom line.

 

TIMES UP... 5 years is long enough. Too many wrong assessments to let him make another one. 

 

Bring in a VP of Baseball OPS to rank over his head immediately please. It pains me to type that but it's the only sensible solution. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I want to go on record once again and say... That if Terry Ryan would have done exactly what I wanted him to do in the off season... This team would probably still be in bad shape. As strongly as I feel about anything... I really believe it's possible that I don't have enough information. 

 

I just want to make sure that everyone knows that I'm not down on Terry Ryan for not doing what I thought he should do instead.

 

However... I also want everyone to know that I don't run a baseball organization for living and I don't have a scouting department staffed with professionals who feed me valuable information to filter through... I don't have numbers guys who feed me numbers to filter through. I don't have the time or the information to go over everything that needs to be gone over because I don't do this for a full time job. 

 

Terry Ryan has all of that... he is in charge of which advisers stay and which advisers go. Which advisers to listen to and which ones have to go the extra mile to prove their case. 

 

The decisions made this year have been wrong almost across the board. There are only 30 of these jobs in the entire world. 

 

I think Terry Ryan has been a loyal Twin and that makes him a teammate of mine as the teams biggest fan... but... bottom line.

 

TIMES UP... 5 years is long enough. Too many wrong assessments to let him make another one. 

 

Bring in a VP of Baseball OPS to rank over his head immediately please. It pains me to type that but it's the only sensible solution. 

Well said on all counts.

 

If Ryan formed the team I wanted him to form, they *might* be 5-7 games better than they are today. Maybe.

 

But that's still terrible. No one accounted for everybody on the team to step backward because that's not the king of thing anyone can account for realistically.

 

It's also not my job to know all of these things... But if I could see glaring holes that weren't filled, inexplicable signings that didn't make sense given the roster construction, and the potential damage caused by violently playing MiLB ping pong with your best prospects, then damn it all Terry Ryan should have seen those things (times 10) and done something about it.

[Kwak]

Since this thread has moved into a FO discussion I would like to address some of those issues (if I may...). Let us recall the dark days after the '11 season and consider what were the stated reasons for removing Bill Smith and what was likely proposed for recovering from that season's disaster. Injuries, bad luck, and bad decisions by Smith were the main reasons cited for the 2011 fiasco. (I wish I had a $1 for every negative Smith post on ​TD).  ​​​What promises were made by Ryan with respect to correcting that fiasco. It seems to me that first, the team just needed to reload the minor leagues and add some healthy pitchers who threw strikes. So much was touted of the MiL system that winning would soon follow. Both Sano and Buxton were projected to be superstars and would surpass the M&M brothers in performance. Ryan was expected to rebuild the rotation (and bullpen) on a shoestring.

 

Fast forward to Winter 2016 finds that the entire franchise is still relying on Sano and Buxton to carry this team (ala` Puckett) to success. The rest would fill in the spaces with youthful enthusiasm, athleticism,  and the hunger for success. Piranhas II so to speak. Comments like "imagine everything working" could be countered with "yes, we saw that last year after the month of April." Envisioning many things going wrong (like 2011) should have been built into this season's projection. But no, it appears that management preferred to believe that 2015 would repeat sans April '15 plus everybody would be just a bit better.

 

When I read Ryan's statement about "...figuring this out..." causes me to react that the spin machine is revving-up and excuses being provided for this failure. Smith got  fired and trashed for 2011 debacle, I wonder what the outcome of the 2016 debacle will be. I earnestly hope it's the "R" word with a concomitant slash in payroll, golden boys, and "The Twins Way". 

Edited July 6, 2016 by Kwak

[drivlikejehu]

 

Since this thread has moved into a FO discussion I would like to address some of those issues (if I may...). Let us recall the dark days after the '11 season and consider what were the stated reasons for removing Bill Smith and what was likely proposed for recovering from that season's disaster. Injuries, bad luck, and bad decisions by Smith were the main reasons cited for the 2011 fiasco. (I wish I had a $1 for every negative Smith post on ​TD).  ​​​​ ​

 

It was basically the same group that had been in place for many years, and the same group that is there now, with some deck chairs moved around. Bill Smith took a lot of heat, and rightly so, but the systemic nature of the problem was clear even back then.

[TheLeviathan]

I don't think it's as easy as saying "my version isn't much better" because every small ripple of difference could have had a huge effect.  Just the Plouffe/Park/Sano decision had a HUGE change on this team.  A few changes here and there and maybe we're just bad and not historically awful.  The "What If" game is just impossible to say.

 

What matters is what RB was getting at - we KNOW the decisions were bad regardless of how bad the outcome was.  Many of us were crowing about it before the results were in.  It's time to go, there are some young guys starting to show some good signs.  Build on that next year with fresh eyes.

[Platoon]

He's a professional paid a crapton of money. Yeah, he's supposed to do better than he did early this season when he spent six weeks with an OPS under or near .750.

 

I've seen many posters deflect blame away from the players and to the front office for any/every perceived failure. I've also seen the opposite, which was the point of my original post. Everybody gets their fair share of blame for this season.

 

But you can't fire players, so...

And when did money purchase maturity? He may be paid to play baseball, but his salary will not dictate personality. For an example, see Moss, Randy! As for the youth in general, many think 1500 PA is the leveling point. These guys are a long way from that.

[tobi0040]

Well said on all counts.

 

If Ryan formed the team I wanted him to form, they *might* be 5-7 games better than they are today. Maybe.

 

But that's still terrible. No one accounted for everybody on the team to step backward because that's not the king of thing anyone can account for realistically.

 

It's also not my job to know all of these things... But if I could see glaring holes that weren't filled, inexplicable signings that didn't make sense given the roster construction, and the potential damage caused by violently playing MiLB ping pong with your best prospects, then damn it all Terry Ryan should have seen those things (times 10) and done something about it.

That is just it. The group leaves 5-7 games on the table each year. Not a big deal this year, I may actually prefer fewer so we can draft JJ Schwartz. But last year we were in the playoffs with a few more wins.

 

Had they flipped Plouffe for a reliever and signed another good one, that may have been 5 right there.

 

Those 5-7 wins will hopefully come in handy in the future. Let's get a new group here.

[Rosterman]

Well, you can fault the players. When they exceed expectations, you praise them. When they falter, you look to a coaching staff to bring them back to square one and what is expected of them...in reality.

 

You can't push rookies. They need to get exposure, play, learn, and play again. Only a few come out of the gate and excel beyond.

 

You can't count on veterans not getting hurt. Just like you can't count on rookies moving up and dominating.

 

But you can have rookies skip a class and get their feet wet.

 

In the future, when drafting pitchers, realize that the majority, if hard throwers, will egt hurt. Sooner AND Later.

 

John Ryan Murphy will still have four years of Twins usage under his belt come 2017.

 

Is it this weekend the Twins will be eliminated from a Wild Card spot?