The Biggest Mistake the Twins' Front Office Made This Offseason

[ToddlerHarmon]

7 hours ago, gunnarthor said:

Falvey was hired to build a pitching pipeline, not rely on free agents. That's exactly why the Pohlad's hired him. We'll see if he can create one.

This I think is the real story. They are taking their shot with the young pitchers. A pitching pipeline requires doing so. Doing so for five rotation spots is not how you write it up, but 2020 made it impossible to evaluate all the young pitchers on actual MiLB performance, so now they have to hold MLB level auditions or turn their back on half of their pipeline without enough information.

I may not agree, but they seem to have concluded this is the right path.

I will admit that there is NO affordable strategy that is likely to fill out an entire rotation from scratch and get you to the World Series. So auditions may be the least bad path for 2022

[RpR]

1 hour ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

To summarize: Pitch more rookies,  more often.  I agree.

With the exception of a small blip in 2017 and a large blip in 2019 Twins attendance has been steadily dropping since 2010, watching the Twins become an embarrassment with rookie pitchers, boy , that will pack in the fans.

[KirbyDome89]

8 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

 

It does not make sense to me to insist they made a mistake or they are waiting a year unless you can provide examples of below average revenue  teams that went deep in the playoffs the year after adding the 3 SPs via trade/ free agency or a combination therefore of with 2 of those spots being the top of their rotation.  Lots of insistence here that the appropriate strategy was obvious but not a single example of when it was successful.  For every example provided of top free agents or trades for top SPs, I will come up with 3 success stories where the team was primarily built on players they drafted or traded for before they were established performers at the MLB level.  It's not a mistake to follow the best practices.

Let's see some examples of below ave Rev teams that built pitching staffs through trading for established SPs and/or signing  top free agents.  

All of whom were left handed, acquired on a leap year, and shared the same astrological sign right? How narrow does the scope need to be before all relevance is lost? I'd argue we're already there. 

[GNess]

To date the biggest failure is the failure to add pitching. Maybe they have a plan, but there is no discernible evidence for such a plan unless the plan is to promote from within and hope for the best.

[KirbyDome89]

8 hours ago, gunnarthor said:

I'm not a fan of this FO but I can't believe they are done addressing pitching yet. They must have a trade in store. We have 30+ years of Pohlad ownership so I'll never blame the FO on payroll issues, which is what I think is stopping them from going after many of these arms. Falvey was hired to build a pitching pipeline, not rely on free agents. That's exactly why the Pohlad's hired him. We'll see if he can create one.

He was never asked to rely solely on FAs. He decided that "flexibility," was more important than stability, and the current mess is one entirely of his own making. We can't be at a point where year 6 is a throw away, with the positional talent, and it's excused because we're still waiting on something better than Randy Dobnak (or Ober if you want to count him at this point.) I don't think they're done with the pitching, honestly I'm not sure how they could be, but I'm not confident it'll be anything more than an Odo type addition with a veteran signing and another reclamation project or two sprinkled in. I guess they can still spend that $40M or whatever it is they're sitting on, but their best chance at adding impact talent with that $$ is gone. 

[tarheeltwinsfan]

1 hour ago, RpR said:

With the exception of a small blip in 2017 and a large blip in 2019 Twins attendance has been steadily dropping since 2010, watching the Twins become an embarrassment with rookie pitchers, boy , that will pack in the fans.

Who would you rather see pitch in 2022 for the Twins: Jordan Balazovic and Jhoan Duran and Simeon Woods Richardson or JA Happ and Matt Shoemaker and John Gant?

[ashbury]

1 hour ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

Who would you rather see pitch in 2022 for the Twins: Jordan Balazovic and Jhoan Duran and Simeon Woods Richardson or JA Happ and Matt Shoemaker and John Gant?

No.

[RpR]

1 hour ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

Who would you rather see pitch in 2022 for the Twins: Jordan Balazovic and Jhoan Duran and Simeon Woods Richardson or JA Happ and Matt Shoemaker and John Gant?

I wouldn't mind Happ and Gant.

[tarheeltwinsfan]

1 hour ago, ashbury said:

No.

Ashbury, I'm not talking about winning. The question was who would you rather watch pitch for the Twins.  I  want to see some young flame throwers. That would be fun. Remember how excited we all were to see Ryan's first start. Or Bailey Ober's first start Or Berrios' first start. Now be honest, how excited were you to watch JA Happ's first start for the Twins? I know you probably don't think the 3 prospects  I named are ready yet, and their young heads may be messed up by starting in the majors too early in their careers and you may be right...but there is no way to prove it unless they start.  Ryan and Ober were ready. And before they started for the Twins, they were  ranked similarly to the 3 stud prospects I named.   Won't you reconsider and let me keep the 3 prospects on the Twins 25 man roster when I become GM this February? (It's not officially been announced yet, so don't tell anyone.)

[mnfireman]

Mid-level pitching FA starters left on the market:

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/01/looking-at-the-remaining-free-agent-starters-beyond-rodon-kershaw.html

 

[TheLeviathan]

The author's point to me seems exactly right.  The team has some building blocks and reason for hope in the high minors along with an offense that could very easily be a winning-caliber group.  Taking short, mid-tier shots at players has a threefold benefit: A) If they're successful and the team is winning it gives them depth and flexibility in their development of young players (plus...winning!) B ) If they are successful but the team is garbage you have attractive trade options.  C) They're garbage and the team is garbage....worth a shot, short term deals come off the books quickly so you can try again.  I've said all along I'm building for a 2023 success story, but doing that means I need to make moves now that help with that vision as well.

I don't see anyone here saying sign 5 Randy Johnsons and have a sixth one in the bullpen just in case with an eleventy billion dollar payroll while we let the Pohlads eat Annie's Mac and Cheese and live out of boxes to feed our baseball habit. So maybe, just maybe, we could stick to what the OP actually said.  (And yet, with this paragraph, I'm still in roughly 6th place for needless, off-track hyperbole for this thread alone.  Sad Panda = Me)

[Jacksson]

Here's the deal:  Twins need a short term shortstop.  Based on last year, if Kirilloff is penciled in at 1B - at least against RHP,  the Twins are in need of a right hand hitting OF.  And we all know they need pitching, particularly starters.  Meanwhile, Oakland is on an economy kick, so much so that they allowed their manager to move on rather than pay him $4 Million.  Oakland has 3 pitchers they would like to move for cheaper talent as well as both a RH hitting OF and a bridge SS who are both signed to contracts that the A's want to get out from under.  So, what would it take to acquire from Oakland a package of:  Montas, Andrus, Piscotty, an additional SP and a bit of cash to ease the contracts being acquired? 

 

[ashbury]

1 hour ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

Ashbury, I'm not talking about winning. The question was who would you rather watch pitch for the Twins.  I  want to see some young flame throwers. That would be fun. Remember how excited we all were to see Ryan's first start. Or Bailey Ober's first start Or Berrios' first start. Now be honest, how excited were you to watch JA Happ's first start for the Twins? I know you probably don't think the 3 prospects  I named are ready yet, and their young heads may be messed up by starting in the majors too early in their careers and you may be right...but there is no way to prove it unless they start.  Ryan and Ober were ready. And before they started for the Twins, they were  ranked similarly to the 3 stud prospects I named.   Won't you reconsider and let me keep the 3 prospects on the Twins 25 man roster when I become GM this February? (It's not officially been announced yet, so don't tell anyone.)

First, thanks for understanding that my "No" answer to an "or" question was part of the social fabric here.   And you deserve a more serious answer than that.

Next, I have literally zero interest in Happ or Shoemaker or Gant.  Zero.  There was a reason Happ signed for the low, low bargain prices of $8M - no team with pennant aspirations bid up his price- and the other two are even less valuable assets.

I want to see our vaunted pipeline of pitching prospects come through.  You pretty much anticipated the things I would have said - "not ready yet," the risk of harming development if a push to the majors proved premature.  If force-feeding the best prospects is a good idea, then why doesn't every first-round draft pick start at AAA and stay there until his numbers demonstrate he should be called up? (Unless you're the Orioles or Pirates, in which case just let them start in the majors since you're not worried about pennant chances.)

Where we mainly disagree is your apparent view that bringing up young players is all a crapshoot with no possible guidance as to who is ready and who is not.  But they keep stats on minor league games, and while those games aren't of the same quality as in the majors, they are played against opponents who also are trying, and thus you can gain some notion of success.

When Joe Ryan got the call to the majors, he had put together a partial season at AAA with an OPS-against of .559 in 66 innings.  It's fair to ask what more he could be asked to demonstrate - he was 25 years old to boot, so bring him up, let's have a look.  Ditto for Bailey Ober to a lesser degree - an OPS-against in the low .600s at AAA in only 4 games, and he was about to turn 26 years old, so he was about as ready as he'll ever be, probably - give him a shot.  It worked out well for both.  But neither was on an opening-day big league roster.

The situation for the 3 prospects you named is not hopeless, but not the same as those two.  Duran is the one I'd be most willing to try.  In 2021 his OPS-against at AAA was .742.  That's not terrible, but it also doesn't suggest dominance.  I use a very rough rule of thumb of .100 points in OPS for each level of promotion (AAA to majors, AA to AAA), and if he had been brought up and pitched to a .842 OPS-against, that might have turned into an ERA in the high 5s.  That's not going to draw fans back for second and third looks as the season wears on.  I'd like him to pitch some more at AAA and get those numbers even lower.

Balazovic and SWR pitched at AA last year, and had .698 and .737 for OPS-against.  Not terrible, but not dominant, and at a level of competition one notch lower than for the other player comps.  Tack on .200 instead of .100 for jumping 2 levels to the majors, and again we are looking at ERAs that could run in the 6s or worse.

One of Bill James's seminal contribution to baseball analytics was to demonstrate that minor league numbers could indeed translate to major league equivalency - individual players will always vary but the overall numbers were pretty coherent.

I'm hoping each of these guys tears it up in AAA, and earns a promotion to see whether the skills will play at the major league level.  But, when you ask me whether I want the major league retreads you named, on opening day,, or three of these rookies, I ask, isn't there some third and better option?

Thus my answer of  'no' was only partly tongue in cheek.

 

[TwinsDr2021]

11 hours ago, tarheeltwinsfan said:

Who would you rather see pitch in 2022 for the Twins: Jordan Balazovic and Jhoan Duran and Simeon Woods Richardson or JA Happ and Matt Shoemaker and John Gant?

Those are the only two options?

Bring back those 3 pitchers that were terrible for the Twins last year or start the season with three minor league pitchers Duran(16 innings at AAA),  SWR (53.1 innings at AA) and Balazovic (97 innings at AA)

Seems like you picked two of the worst ideas for the Twins next year possible.

I would prefer they bring in Duffy and/or Cueto or Pineda to start the season and ease all the prospects up.

 

[Steve71]

Duffy is out until at least June, but he could be an option at a reduced cost and some possible mid-season insurance.

[Whitey333]

Pitching young prospects to gain major league experience and judge their talent and development makes sense.  It doesn't make much sense to do it all at once if that turns out to be the plan.  There will be a lot of growing pains and another long summer with terrible results if pitching isn't upgraded.  Maybe a couple of those prospects pan out, maybe not.  But as currently constructed we do not have a major league pitching staff.  Our "starting " staff is minor league at best.  Let's hope it gets improved before the season starts.

[Trov]

On 1/4/2022 at 8:09 AM, TopGunn#22 said:

You hit the nail on the head.  The biggest mistake was letting the Tigers out-bid them for Ed-Rod.  I think he's going to have a pretty good year.  

He signed a 5 year 77 mil deal.  First, how much more do you think Twins would have had to offer to sign him?  Second, you say you think he will have a good year, maybe he will, not that he has had some amazing track record in his career.  2019 he had a pretty good year, but outside of that he has not done much to say he is an 'ace'.  Last year was a drop off for him.  Will he bounce back sure he might, but it is not like he had long stretches' of success, one year is not long stretch.  

So lets assume he bounces back next year and has a return to 2019 numbers, there is no reason to expect he does that for the full length of his contract.  So what about year 2-5 of the contract.  I bet Detroit will be unhappy with the contract in the last 3 years of it.  

History has shown most long term pitching contracts do not work out well for the team.  Only a very few contracts work out well for the team.  Most of the time the second half or more is wasted money.  

The second part of your post talks about jumping onto the market because it was moving fast.  Maybe a mistake, but many times jumping into a market because things move fast creates bigger risk of making mistake.  I would argue making a bad signing because you need to do something, has much worse long term affect than missing out on someone.  It is already a huge risk to sign an pitcher to 5 year plus deals.  I would much rather say well we missed on him, even if we had a chance, than say damn why did we sign him we got a 15 mil a year long relief guy that we cannot count on. 

[tarheeltwinsfan]

11 hours ago, ashbury said:

First, thanks for understanding that my "No" answer to an "or" question was part of the social fabric here.   And you deserve a more serious answer than that.

Next, I have literally zero interest in Happ or Shoemaker or Gant.  Zero.  There was a reason Happ signed for the low, low bargain prices of $8M - no team with pennant aspirations bid up his price- and the other two are even less valuable assets.

I want to see our vaunted pipeline of pitching prospects come through.  You pretty much anticipated the things I would have said - "not ready yet," the risk of harming development if a push to the majors proved premature.  If force-feeding the best prospects is a good idea, then why doesn't every first-round draft pick start at AAA and stay there until his numbers demonstrate he should be called up? (Unless you're the Orioles or Pirates, in which case just let them start in the majors since you're not worried about pennant chances.)

Where we mainly disagree is your apparent view that bringing up young players is all a crapshoot with no possible guidance as to who is ready and who is not.  But they keep stats on minor league games, and while those games aren't of the same quality as in the majors, they are played against opponents who also are trying, and thus you can gain some notion of success.

When Joe Ryan got the call to the majors, he had put together a partial season at AAA with an OPS-against of .559 in 66 innings.  It's fair to ask what more he could be asked to demonstrate - he was 25 years old to boot, so bring him up, let's have a look.  Ditto for Bailey Ober to a lesser degree - an OPS-against in the low .600s at AAA in only 4 games, and he was about to turn 26 years old, so he was about as ready as he'll ever be, probably - give him a shot.  It worked out well for both.  But neither was on an opening-day big league roster.

The situation for the 3 prospects you named is not hopeless, but not the same as those two.  Duran is the one I'd be most willing to try.  In 2021 his OPS-against at AAA was .742.  That's not terrible, but it also doesn't suggest dominance.  I use a very rough rule of thumb of .100 points in OPS for each level of promotion (AAA to majors, AA to AAA), and if he had been brought up and pitched to a .842 OPS-against, that might have turned into an ERA in the high 5s.  That's not going to draw fans back for second and third looks as the season wears on.  I'd like him to pitch some more at AAA and get those numbers even lower.

Balazovic and SWR pitched at AA last year, and had .698 and .737 for OPS-against.  Not terrible, but not dominant, and at a level of competition one notch lower than for the other player comps.  Tack on .200 instead of .100 for jumping 2 levels to the majors, and again we are looking at ERAs that could run in the 6s or worse.

One of Bill James's seminal contribution to baseball analytics was to demonstrate that minor league numbers could indeed translate to major league equivalency - individual players will always vary but the overall numbers were pretty coherent.

I'm hoping each of these guys tears it up in AAA, and earns a promotion to see whether the skills will play at the major league level.  But, when you ask me whether I want the major league retreads you named, on opening day,, or three of these rookies, I ask, isn't there some third and better option?

Thus my answer of  'no' was only partly tongue in cheek.

 

Ashbury, Thank you for your thoughtful and informative reply.  I concede to your point of view. It is a wise, fact based position. I am not worthy. 

[TwinsDr2021]

3 hours ago, Trov said:

He signed a 5 year 77 mil deal.  First, how much more do you think Twins would have had to offer to sign him?  Second, you say you think he will have a good year, maybe he will, not that he has had some amazing track record in his career.  2019 he had a pretty good year, but outside of that he has not done much to say he is an 'ace'.  Last year was a drop off for him.  Will he bounce back sure he might, but it is not like he had long stretches' of success, one year is not long stretch. 

Nobody has suggested signing him to be an ace, have they? his WAR since 2015 (at age 22) are 2.5, .4, 1.8, 3.0, 6.1, 1.9. So assuming he is going to be around 2 to 3 WAR isn't out of the question, He will be 29 on April 7th, so it isn't like he is old, signing a 29 year old pitcher with a decent track record to 15 million dollar a year until they are 33 isn't a crazy idea.

I will say signing pitchers like this every year probably isn't a winning strategy, but signing a pitcher like this when you only hope is prospects and there is plenty of payroll isn't a terrible idea either.

Unless of course you are willing to concede another year of not good baseball, and I really don't think the Twins want that and I am sure ticker buyers don't either.

[RpR]

Last season during the early months, the starting pitcher could be pulled leading , tied, or down a few runs; then the Bull Pen pitchers came in and threw the game away.

So some want to throw rookies to the wolves so that when the Bull Pen boys come in , how good they are is meaningless, brilliant.

[nicksaviking]

I think that starting pitching ZIPS projection is high if they are expecting Meada to contribute meaningful innings this year.

[tony&rodney]

I can wait until the season starts to evaluate whether Falvine were "coming to work" enough.

[dgdynasty]

On 1/5/2022 at 3:20 AM, Blyleven2011 said:

As most fans have said in this post and alot of other post is a plan or construction of a team towards competitiveness  ......

 

I for one would like the front office to be straightforward  with their plan with the fans .

 

If the plan is to use the talent we have in prospects for the roster , so be it ...

 

If the plan it is to trade prospects for some  starting pitching , so be it ...

If the plan is to dumpster dive , so be it ....

 

Just give us a plan and maybe we can patiently wait out their plan  .....

 

 

I am thinking along the same lines. The FO's biggest mistake is stating they plan to be "competitive" without defining what they mean by that.

Does that mean trying to get to the playoffs? Because that should always be the goal, but are they going to make moves to make it more likely to occur? So far they have not and so using the word in that sense is somewhat misleading.

If they mean "competitive" as having a team that will play games and try to win while mostly evaluating the talent they have in the pipeline, they should specify that and not be so vague.

I am all for the latter, but just would like them to be straightforward with what they mean.

[tony&rodney]

28 minutes ago, dgdynasty said:

If they mean "competitive" as having a team that will play games and try to win while mostly evaluating the talent they have in the pipeline ...

Why does this sound like Baltimore and Pittsburgh? Not your comment but the plan to fail.