Matt Capps, Bill Smith and the trade that ruined Twins baseball

[bird]

The Cardinals and Red Sox disagree with this conclusion. And, if you refuse to sign FAs, and refuse to trade prospects for players, if that is your strategy, then you have to be BETTER than other teams at drafting and devloping. Otherwise it is a bad strategy. It was Ryan's team's job to get good players here. they failed. No idea why people want to keep making excuses for those down years.

 

No they don't.

[bird]

The Cardinals and Red Sox disagree with this conclusion. And, if you refuse to sign FAs, and refuse to trade prospects for players, if that is your strategy, then you have to be BETTER than other teams at drafting and devloping. Otherwise it is a bad strategy. It was Ryan's team's job to get good players here. they failed. No idea why people want to keep making excuses for those down years.

 

No excuses here. I'm just encouraging people to attribute the causes fairly instead of piling on indiscriminately.

[Mike Sixel]

The problems for this team are vast, and everyone has played a part. But three bad trades are not THE problem, imo. They certainly contribute, though. Agreed. I mostly blame the scouts, as it is their job to assess the players.

[Guest USAFChief]

No they don't.

While I agree Ryan is not the only source of the minor league problems, he was the guy in charge and therefore gets the ultimate blame.And I think Boston and St Louis are excellent examples to at least call into question whether draft position is any kind of viable excuse for lack of talent in any team's minor league system.

[bird]

Go out to the beyond the boxscore site. They've compiled the top 160 prospect rankings. They've then assigned values that attempt to reflect the quality of each system.

 

Is it any wonder that most of the teams at the top of the list have benefitted from having primo draft positions for years? Most much more favorable than that of the Twins? Houston, Pittsburgh, KC, the Mets... No, the Cards are middle-of-the pack, and so are the Rays, who are viewed by many of you as possessing genius compared to the lowly Twins, right? See the pattern? With few exceptions, you can observe a correlation between high draft picks and systems with high rankings. And some of the exceptions, like Boston, may be ranked highly as much for their success spending internationally as with drafting prowess.

 

 

All I'm saying is that it's absurdly simplistic and patently unfair and untrue to assign vitually 100% of the blame for a mediocre system (and it was NEVER ranked as poorly as Chicago and Detroit are now) on a GM. And it's entirely hypocritical of some of you to bash Ryan for the bad years and at best begrudgingly credit him now that the system is robust. He gets partial credit now. He should get partial blame for the past.

[Mike Sixel]

I'd guess teh Cards system would be better if Wacha was still eligible.....and, middle of the road? The Twins system was much, much worse than that when Smith took over.

[bird]

While I agree Ryan is not the only source of the minor league problems, he was the guy in charge and therefore gets the ultimate blame.And I think Boston and St Louis are excellent examples to at least call into question whether draft position is any kind of viable excuse for lack of talent in any team's minor league system.

 

The Rays were the myth of the past. The Cards were last year's myth. Boston is today's myth. Ther really isn't any evidence of a sustainable track record of success that can be reasonably linked to better scouting and better drafting by most teams and inferior scouting and drafting for most others.

 

I would suggest that Boston and the Cards may be a bit better than most, including the Twins. I'll also suggest that the Brewers, Tigers, and some others are a bit worse. But I reject the notion that gets constantly promoted here that the Twins have inferior capabilities. And I reject the "well, Ryan was in charge" thing. If you're driving along and someone runs a light, causing you to t-bone them, I'm sorry, man, you were driving. You're a menace on the road. There are lots of contributing factors and the driver bears only some of the blame, right?

[bird]

I'd guess teh Cards system would be better if Wacha was still eligible.....and, middle of the road? The Twins system was much, much worse than that when Smith took over.

 

 

This is a false statement.

[Mike Sixel]

Then where are any of the arb eligible players on this roster? Where is the starting OF/DH? or 3B, or C, or SS or starting pitching? EVERY starter and most relievers were not drafted by the Twins........not sure how we can conclude anything other than they failed at executing their strategy. But we've been over this. We agree many are accountable. We disagree on whether or not the Twins drafted well or not, given their "constraints".

[thetank]

My list of the five worst trades the Twins have ever made:

 

1. Two cornerstone roster pieces for Delmon Young. Net WAR - infinity.

2. Kaat to the White Sox for $500 cash. (He proceeded to win 20 games two consecutive years).

3. Ramos for Capps (you make the case well)

4. Hardy for crap

5. Rod Carew for Ken Landreaux and very little else

Greg Nettles for Luis Tiant. Tiant is released after 1season and the Red Sox eventually pick him up.

[bird]

I'd guess teh Cards system would be better if Wacha was still eligible.....and, middle of the road? The Twins system was much, much worse than that when Smith took over.

 

The worst ranking I can recall from back the was 17th., but in any case the consensus was very clearly middle-of-the-road, not abhorrent as so often portrayed.

 

And exactly which system would NOT look better had no prospect graduated?

[Marta Shearing]

I don't believe the story. I think it's total bunk. And common senses does NOT tell me that.

Because raising payroll is never an issue with the Twins?

[Marta Shearing]

Wow. That is some high-grade BS. The money that Bill spends on movies is his own, what he received as part of his inheritance. It's completely separate. Jim is an investor. But, again, that is from his personal fortune, not from the Twins corporation.

 

I do agree that Smith wanted to spend his way out of the mess he created. But that wasn't all he wanted to do. He wanted to trade signature prospects for more expensive veteran help. The Ramos trade was his model for how he wanted to rebuild the roster. He thought that was a great move. He probably still does. They nixed it because it was expedient, not because it was expensive. They asked Ryan about his plan and you can guess what his answer was. So they canned the plan and they canned Smith. It just wasn't a sustainable model that would support winning. And the early returns from 2011 were visible proof of that.

 

In the long term, the Ryan plan will actually be more expensive than the Smith plan. There is a thread on this site about how to extend Buxton to make his payroll hit won't bankrupt the franchise. Winning the right way is expensive. It might be cheap now. But in three years, the team will be looking at ways to make budget. In five years, it will need to start trading the next Denard Span (Aaron Hicks) to make room for having Meyer, Sano and Buxton on the same team.

I don't believe for a second Smith's plan included trading prospects. He got fired because he wanted to raise payroll.

 

When this young group gets to contender status and are serious World Series contenders, and that 3 year window is wide open, do you think pohlad will be willing to spend the money to add the final piece to put them over the top?

[bird]

Then where are any of the arb eligible players on this roster? Where is the starting OF/DH? or 3B, or C, or SS or starting pitching? EVERY starter and most relievers were not drafted by the Twins........not sure how we can conclude anything other than they failed at executing their strategy. But we've been over this. We agree many are accountable. We disagree on whether or not the Twins drafted well or not, given their "constraints".

 

 

I'm sorry, mike, but again, great job of selecting the criteria by which you judge their competence. A middle-of-the-road farm system at the low point of the cycle is a stronger indicator. Especially when one regards (not excuse-making!) other factors. For example, lacking surplus talent through which to replenish the system a la Span and Revere, being in the very early stages of building the organizational capacity to begin competing for international talent, injuries to the likes of Rainville, Fox, Waldrop.

 

So yes we disagree about what factual basis one might fairly assess why the past failures resulted, and we certainly disagree about the level of prowess that was in place then and is in place now. Remember what your view of the farm system was just two short years ago, mike.

[Marta Shearing]

Also, the indisputable atrophy of the farm system that people like to point to as a sign of Ryan's incompetence was caused in part by factors out of a GM's control. The Twins farm system would have suffered under the watch of any GM in the business given the long string of poor draft positions, among other factors. Ryan is only partially culpable.

Is it too late to get this statement entered in Common's tournament? I'm just playing with you. :-)

[JB_Iowa]

In the long term, the Ryan plan will actually be more expensive than the Smith plan. There is a thread on this site about how to extend Buxton to make his payroll hit won't bankrupt the franchise. Winning the right way is expensive. It might be cheap now. But in three years, the team will be looking at ways to make budget. In five years, it will need to start trading the next Denard Span (Aaron Hicks) to make room for having Meyer, Sano and Buxton on the same team.

 

Your point is well stated. But the jury is still out on whether the team will actually follow through on the Ryan plan in the long run.

 

For that, we can only wait and watch.

[diehardtwinsfan]

MODERATOR NOTE, let's tone down the personal comments. There's a interesting discussion to be had, but right now it's being had by insults. If that doesn't change, I'm closing this thread.

 

Edit: I cannot type

[Mike Sixel]

The farm system was terrible two years ago. Now it is not. I would never say lower picks are as easy to hit on as high picks, we have also agreed on that in the past.

[diehardtwinsfan]

To get this back on topic, I've never seen a link personally where the exact reason for Smith's firing was supplied. I wasn't a fan of Smith, particularly when he felt he had to make a trade. I'll simply ask politely, does someone have a link to this spending theory? I never saw it reported in the papers in anything other than irreconcilable differences... the budget has always been the speculated reason.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

I'm sorry, when has Wilson Ramos been a reliable, healthy Catcher option? Not to say he cant be at times, but Carlos Gomez and/or JJ Hardy have both been far more reliable than him to date, and those are both position players where the Twins have lacked depth for at least one of the last few seasons

 

I am bumping this comment -- Ramos has been on the field less than Mauer.

[JB_Iowa]

I don't believe that they have ever stated the exact reasons:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7204414/minnesota-twins-dismiss-general-manager-bill-smith-return-terry-ryan-interim

 

In order to discern what "philosophical differences" might mean, you have to look at what Smith was doing -- that would then imply that they wanted a different direction.

[bird]

Because raising payroll is never an issue with the Twins?

 

No, because the story's so far-fetched and outside of any universe of plausibility about how business gets conducted and budgets get discussed, Marta.

[JB_Iowa]

To follow up, Gleeman stated that we'd see what those "philosophical differences" would be but he also noted that Ryan immediately revealed that the payroll would drop from about $115 m to $100 m.

 

http://aarongleeman.com/2011/11/08/twins-fire-general-manager-bill-smith-name-terry-ryan-interim-gm/

 

 

Given the immediate juxtaposition of the payroll drop, it is kind of hard to ignore that as, perhaps, one of the philosophical differences.

[bird]

The farm system was terrible two years ago. Now it is not. I would never say lower picks are as easy to hit on as high picks, we have also agreed on that in the past.

 

Again, by the more universally accepted standards, in particular farm system rankings by a dozen or so credible publications, the farm system was mediocre, mike, not terrible.

 

But I accept the your standards are much much harsher.

[Boom Boom]

So we're arguing over what % of the Twins three-season dumpster fire is attributable to Ryan?

 

I'm going to say somewhere between 1 and 99%.

[bird]

The farm system was terrible two years ago. Now it is not. I would never say lower picks are as easy to hit on as high picks, we have also agreed on that in the past.

 

Just to clarify, not only is the farm system NOT terrible now, it's superb. Say it, mike. Superb.

 

 

Was it BP's analysis that showed a 70%+ success rate for picks #1-10, a less than 50% rate for picks #11-20, and about 25% success for picks #21-30?Go a decade with making selections with a 25% chance versus a decade with selections given a 70% chance. So, never saying that lower picks are as easy to hit on as high picks? Can you see how that rings a bit hollow? I know it's unintentional, mike, but it obscures the reality of the situation.

[Seth Stohs]

This is a fun thread... clearly people must enjoy this, huh?

 

And... there is no proof or backing or reasons that have been given for why Bill Smith was fired. Anything we 'hear' is just rumor and guessing.

 

But, it sure is fun to drum up all this stuff once in awhile, huh?

 

Go Twins!

[Mike Sixel]

The system right now is electrifyingly exciting. I agree on that 100%. That's not anything anyone disagrees with, as far as I can tell. Superb, even.....

 

I think our issue is two fold, but I could be wrong:

 

1. Since they, in the past and so far the present, are all about building form within and trading the present for the future, they NEED to be better than other teams for their strategy to be successful, or they need to change their strategy. since we have seen the payroll drop (as a percent of revenue, with the new $25MM this year), it isn't clear that strategy has changed it.

 

2. Rankings, once players graduate, don't interest me. What interests me is what did happen, not what was predicted to happen (if it is the past). What happened, imo, is that other than Span and Revere and maybe Dozier, nothing has come up from the minors worth anything lately. Every single starting pitcher this year will have been NOT drafted by the Twins. There is only one above A ball that looks like he'll be in the rotation in the next 2 years they drafted.

 

We clearly, 100%, disagree on this part. That's ok. It doesn't bother me one bit that we disagree, actually. Nor am I trying to convince you, because neither of us appears likely to change our opinions. But I believe the best way to judge the farm system in the past is by who comes up and does well, not on the rankings in the past. And, given that the team is sorely lacking good, young, players (even counting the 2 they traded away), we disagree on whether or not the team and its scouts and gm and farm director should be more accountable for that failure. Again, it's all about their strategy. If it is to "build the right way" by drafting......then the strategy was badly executed, imo.

[bird]

you make your points well, mike, and while I quibble a bit with how you select your facts, I respect your opinion and credit you for your thoughtful presentation of them.

 

But, I'll tell you, that was sweet. mike wants wins called the Twins farm system Superb, even

[Brock Beauchamp]

So we're arguing over what % of the Twins three-season dumpster fire is attributable to Ryan?

 

I'm going to say somewhere between 1 and 99%.

 

This. Everybody gets a little blame for this mess. Ryan for not continuing to build a better than average MiLB system through the mid 2000s, Smith for trading away the assets Ryan did draft or acquire (Bartlett, Garza, Ramos).

 

How different is 2011-2013 if those three players are on the roster? Smith inherited a bad situation and proceeded to light the damned building on fire instead of improving the situation.