Is this front office borderline hostile to "not their" guys?

[Brock Beauchamp]

18 hours ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

Using RBI as the only metric by which to judge offensive value is not a serious approach.  To wit--in 2019/2020 Eddie Rosario had more RBIs than Mike Trout despite having fewer PAs.  Are you prepared to argue that 2019/2020 Rosario was a superior offensive player than 2019/2020 Mike Trout?

A hilariously perfect example of the flaws of RBI and Runs Scored.

[nicksaviking]

2 hours ago, Mark G said:

Either I am missing something here, or we just disagree on the end results of what I would call a sell off.  You just listed 7 major league players traded in the span of a season (July to July, I believe), and I don't remember getting major league players in return, so young players had to replace them on a borderline wild card roster.  I would submit that most, if not all, were better than the young players that took their place, at least in those 2 years.  Again, we can debate whether or not the long term results, due to the prospects we got in return, were good, but it did take experience away from the roster at the time.  And your own figures state all but one were in positive WAR territory, so unless the replacements did better how do we say it didn't hurt those two particular teams in the moment?  Yet the first two years of this FO, as I said, was 163-161.  No one can prove a negative, so I can't tell you what the record would have been, but picture the team buying those two July's instead of selling.  I can only project the team being contenders, at least into late Sept.  And maybe we wouldn't have the up and coming players we have now, I won't argue that.  It just isn't possible to not wonder what could have been.  

I disliked all three of the vets the Twins traded in 2017. My only gripe would have been in trading for Garcia in the first place. That was the definition of a half-measure.

But I think our view of being a contender are different, because neither of those clubs had pitching that could match up enough to win a World Series. I have never lacked more enthusiasm for the Twins in the post season than I did in that dumb and easily predictable 2017 Wild Card game.

[Cap'n Piranha]

12 hours ago, Mark G said:

True, but it is a pretty important one.  And, while Trout may be a superior overall player throughout his career, superior skills and superior stats are not the same.  To wit- Buxton is a superior player all around than Rosario.  Yet with 19 home runs and 23 doubles (in a limited number of PA's last year) he only produced 32 RBI's.  As much as I want Buxton as an all around player, I still want the guy who has a knack for getting that run across the plate, and Rosario did it better than any Twin for two years.  Just my extremely humble opinion.  

It's really not.  RBIs are very much dependent on whether or not runners are on base, and as such are warped by that.  Rosario was good at getting RBIs because he got to hit third or fourth for essentially all of his PAs.  

In 2019, the whole league had 79,734 PAs with runners on, and 45,470 of those had runner(s) in scoring, out of 186,516 PAs in total.  Eddie Rosario in 2019 had 285 PAs with runners on, and 173 with RISP, out of 590 total PAs.  As such, Rosario had 48.3% of his PAs with a runner on, 29.3% with RISP, whereas the league was at 42.7% with runners and 24.3% with RISP.  No wonder Eddie had a lot of RBIs--he got more opportunities than the rest of the league.

[Mark G]

8 minutes ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

It's really not.  RBIs are very much dependent on whether or not runners are on base, and as such are warped by that.  Rosario was good at getting RBIs because he got to hit third or fourth for essentially all of his PAs.  

In 2019, the whole league had 79,734 PAs with runners on, and 45,470 of those had runner(s) in scoring, out of 186,516 PAs in total.  Eddie Rosario in 2019 had 285 PAs with runners on, and 173 with RISP, out of 590 total PAs.  As such, Rosario had 48.3% of his PAs with a runner on, 29.3% with RISP, whereas the league was at 42.7% with runners and 24.3% with RISP.  No wonder Eddie had a lot of RBIs--he got more opportunities than the rest of the league.

I very respectfully stand by the opinion that yes, it really is.  There is a reason certain players are put in clean up spots (3-5).  It is because they have proven they will take advantage of the opportunities more often/better than other players.  It hadn't  changed in 100 years, and is still pretty common today, even with all the analytics.  As I said above, Buxton, with his 42 extra base hits (19 HR and 23 2B) drove in 32 runs total.  The slugging % looks great, but I still want the guy behind him to bring him in, or the guy on base when he connects.  The opinion of others saying RBI's and runs scored are flawed are opinions they are entitled to, but I wouldn't trade those two stats anytime soon.  The stat "runs produced", combing these, is a stat that has stood the test of time.  And still does.  Thanks for the debate.  

[Cap'n Piranha]

3 hours ago, Mark G said:

Either I am missing something here, or we just disagree on the end results of what I would call a sell off.  You just listed 7 major league players traded in the span of a season (July to July, I believe), and I don't remember getting major league players in return, so young players had to replace them on a borderline wild card roster.  I would submit that most, if not all, were better than the young players that took their place, at least in those 2 years.  Again, we can debate whether or not the long term results, due to the prospects we got in return, were good, but it did take experience away from the roster at the time.  And your own figures state all but one were in positive WAR territory, so unless the replacements did better how do we say it didn't hurt those two particular teams in the moment?  Yet the first two years of this FO, as I said, was 163-161.  No one can prove a negative, so I can't tell you what the record would have been, but picture the team buying those two July's instead of selling.  I can only project the team being contenders, at least into late Sept.  And maybe we wouldn't have the up and coming players we have now, I won't argue that.  It just isn't possible to not wonder what could have been.  

In 2017, the team did make the playoffs, so clearly trading away the players who were barely positive in WAR didn't prevent the team from making the playoffs.

In 2018, the team performed better after trading away the big league talent--either the replacements for those players were better, or the rest of the team played better.  If it's the latter, we could hypothesize that keeping those players they traded, when added to the better performance from the rest of the team, would have made a difference.  Except that the Twins were 48-54 when the trades started happening, and would have needed 91 wins to tie the Indians for the division (Cleveland had the worst record of any AL playoff team).  Even with Esco, Dozier, Pressly, et al, do you think the Twins could have gone 47-17 to finish that season?  For reference, that is approximately the same winning percentage of the 2001 Mariners, who had the best regular season of all time.  You wonder about what could have been; I see what never was going to be.

[nicksaviking]

2 hours ago, Mark G said:

I very respectfully stand by the opinion that yes, it really is.  There is a reason certain players are put in clean up spots (3-5).  It is because they have proven they will take advantage of the opportunities more often/better than other players.  It hadn't  changed in 100 years, and is still pretty common today, even with all the analytics.  As I said above, Buxton, with his 42 extra base hits (19 HR and 23 2B) drove in 32 runs total.  The slugging % looks great, but I still want the guy behind him to bring him in, or the guy on base when he connects.  The opinion of others saying RBI's and runs scored are flawed are opinions they are entitled to, but I wouldn't trade those two stats anytime soon.  The stat "runs produced", combing these, is a stat that has stood the test of time.  And still does.  Thanks for the debate.  

How is Buxton going to get RBI batting leadoff? Is he supposed to knock in Ben Rortvedt and Gilbert Celestino who were sitting on the bench after striking out? RBI is a near useless stat. You don't bat clean up because you get RBI, you get RBI because you bat cleanup. It's almost entirely dependent on where you bat in the lineup and who's in front of you in the lineup.

[TheLeviathan]

The threads I've reviewed today have really only one solution:

This organization needs to do something significant, soon (and not Jake f-ing Cave), so this fan base knows whether to freak out or be excited or whatever it might be.  Everyone is super emotional and anxious because all the paths forward - aggressive, tear down, whatever - are plausible.

[USAFChief]

19 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

How is Buxton going to get RBI batting leadoff? Is he supposed to knock in Ben Rortvedt and Gilbert Celestino who were sitting on the bench after striking out? RBI is a near useless stat. You don't bat clean up because you get RBI, you get RBI because you bat cleanup. It's almost entirely dependent on where you bat in the lineup and who's in front of you in the lineup.

 There are flaws with the RBI stat but you are overstating the case. Someone has to drive in runs, you don't get to put a 1 in the runs column just because someone drew a walk. 

I don't understand how someone could watch the Twins with runners on 2nd/3rd, less than two outs not score, and come away not understanding how important it is to drive in runs. 

In fact, I'd say 2 out RBI are the single most important factor in Wins and Losses over time.

[Emjay]

I'm not sure what they are trying to accomplish aside  from giving the fans the middle finger and insulting  Buck and our entire homegrown cluster of talent. I like JD and I understand why they made some of the moves they did at the time they did, but now it has blown up into the most pathetic hot mess and outright failure of any front office in the league...who does this crap? You gamble away Berrios....outch, you toss away Cruz like he is yesterday's trash...but okay, we will recover...but Buxton??? Neither this team or the fans will recover from that move anytime soon.  They dynamic duo has failed and so has their manager and most of his coaches. Hey guys, take your season tickets and shove 'em.