End of the Road for Phil Hughes and the Twins

I would be even prouder if they did the same with Lynn, and brought up Gonsalves. 

This is crazy talk, an absurd hot take.

Lance Lynn has no injury and has a long track record of success. He's been bad but it would be really shocking if he just all of a sudden forgot how to pitch at age 31. He's also not signed for next year so if you want to build his trade value, you have to start him. If nothing else, it's be insane to release him since he'd be a nice arm for the bullpen as he's always had a reasonably high strikeout rate.

You'd also be bringing Gonsalves up and starting his MLB Clock in order to get maybe 1-2 starts before May and Santana are back. This would be the definition of a move with no point.

Like most Twins fans, I hated the extension, and still do not understand it. But there is no denying Hughes is a warrior. I respect what he accomplished in his major league career, and understand that, although part of the game, career threatening injuries don’t always happen to the other team’s players.

1.) Most Twins fans now claim to hate the move but back then, the reaction was decidedly more mixed. This is the TD version of the "I was at the Bill Mazeroski Shot Heard Round the World game."

2.) I was one of many people who liked the move back then and I like it still today. The move was reasonable (Phil Hughes salary has not hamstrung the Twins and he has not blocked any ready prospects) and just didn't work out. Sometimes the end result is bad but it doesn't mean the process was bad. The Twins got a great season out of Hughes and because of the two years left on his deal, they had the leverage to get a team-friendly extension. That involves a gamble but it was a reasonable one, especially when you think about how hard it is to find an ace.

And Phil Hughes had an ace season. He was 27 with the stuff to make it seem like it could be legit. Potentially having an ace for 5 years is worth what the Twins paid. I know this because the Twins are still looking for an ace. It's hard to lure one away (Darvish showed us that non-elite markets and teams need to pay way extra to get top pitchers) and it's hard to develop one (Berrios is likely a #2, Romero might be it but it's early and Graterol looks like one but throws 100 which is scary injury-wise).

I thought it was a good move then and I stand by that today. It's easy to hate on the decision because it didn't work out but 2014 Phil Hughes was probably the best shot the Twins have had to find an ace or near-ace pitcher. They took that shot and I don't fault them for it - you miss 100% of shots you don't take.

Gonsalves is going to turn 24 in July... How much longer do we have to wait to start the clock?

The clock is not dependent on age so that really has little to do with it.

I think they'd have no issue if Santana/May weren't in the mix. Gonsalves would have a shot to grab the open spot. But that spot isn't open, it's a temporary one.

It'd be shortsighted to bring Gonsalves up for 2-3 starts when you know that barring injury, he's going to head back down. If you were starting Sam Deduno instead, it's be one thing. But Lance Lynn is a vet with a track record of success and it's not unreasonable to give him a bit more rope.

Finally, Gonsalves has only 9 starts in AAA. Not crazy to give him some more time, especially because he's not a stuff pitcher. I could be totally making this up but it seems like a guy with great stuff would have an easier time adjusting to a level change than a guy who is more about pitching like Gonsalves. again, total conjecture.

Any chance Phil ends up in the Twins minor league system? I wouldn't hate letting him get some AAA work in as a reliever to see if he can find something.

The Cards had absolutely no interest.

 

I don't think any GM is gonna ignore that, even if he rattles off a few usable starts. He is torching the pen.

 

It is also not unusual for a 31 year old pitcher, or any age pitcher for that matter, to have lost his effectiveness, regardless of his track record. Matt Harvey comes to mind, as a recent example.

 

would you rather pay Hughes millions to lose games for the Twins, or to lose games for another team? .

1.) Not true that the Cardinals had no interest. They extended him a qualifying offer, indicating that they were willing to pay him like $17 million to pitch for a season. Once the market fell out, I imagine that they would have taken him back but likely paid less than the Twins (because they'd be giving up the opportunity to get a draft pick). Also, no way Lynn goes back to the team that wouldn't extend him. I don't remember that ever happening, there's pride involved here too.

2.) This isn't 1990. GMs look at the whole picture with Lynn, not his ERA. If he shows some signs of coming around (walk rate drops etc.) someone will see him as a buy-low candidate at the deadline. There's no medical reason for him to be this bad.

3.) Along those lines, he's not Matt Harvey. Harvey has had two plus pretty bad seasons in a row and has had issues with velocity and a drop in his K rate that points at medical issues. That's not true of Lynn. There's no medical concern and his velocity/K rate haven't dropped, this is a pitching mechanics issue. Someone will gamble on that because pitching doesn't grow on trees.

4.) Hughes is totally different. There's a medical reason that he is no longer a good pitcher - he's lost movement and velocity on pitches and has been bad for years now. (He's like Harvey). Lynn has been bad for 8 starts (and really only 6 of those starts). That's not enough to rip things apart, it's time to chill and give it some time, painful as that is.

5.) Perhaps the courage is to stay the course and trust your pitching coaches and catchers to work with a veteran and fix his issues.

The bad news for Phil Hughes is that he has been released. The good news is that such a nice article can be written by Nick about a nice man who gave it his best, had a tough series of injuries, but kept trying. He never gave up. There's a lot to be said for that. Hughes made enough money to live like a king the rest of his life. That, to me sounds like a lot of "good news" for Phil Hughes. I want to say to Phil Hughes: "Good luck to you, Phil ,and I hope your "after baseball life" is a long and happy one. Thank you for your dedication and effort. Thank you for your tweet." 

Amen. He was always a class act and always worked his butt off to get back, even when the Twins were bad. I hope he gets another shot somewhere.

To be clear, a player's service time "clock" doesn't so much "start" when they are called up, as it does "run" while they are up and "pause" when they are sent down. If they sent Gonsalves down after 2 starts, the clock would pause just like it did for Felix Jorge last summer.

And like Jorge (and Romero), Gonsalves's "option clock" has already begun too. This already qualifies as an option year for him, so there is zero marginal cost to the Twins (in terms of options) to recall him and send him back down as many times as they like this season.

Now, in the context of cutting Lynn, it still might not make sense, but that is primarily on the cutting Lynn side, and perhaps on the subjective Gonsalves scouting side. It should have nothing to do with his service time clock or options at this point.

I'm still confident that they should keep Lynn based on the marginal cost of cutting Lynn but good info.

Those two weeks could mean that the Twins end up in a situation where they would need to keep him in AAA longer next year. If he doesn't start this year (not crazy with the Twins starting depth) but is ready next spring, the Twins may want to delay the clock and find it harder with the two weeks. That said, I think that's pretty unlikely. I also think it's usually a poor choice to worry about the clock with pitchers rather than position players. Pitching is so uncertain that unless a guy is a clear stud, it doesn't make sense to take that service clock too into consideration.

Maybe. It is not unusual for a team to extend a qualifying offer to a player they know will refuse, just for the draft pick. It was well known that Lynn would not be accepting a QO, and thought he would be cashing in.

It seems extra unlikely since there wasn't a starting spot by the end of the winter since the Cardinals went out and signed other pitching, assuming that Lynn would not return. But I think it's pretty disingenuous to say that the Cardinals had no interest in Lance Lynn. They likely had a number they'd've extended him at, he thought he could get more and then baseball's weird indentured servitude rules kicked in and a reunion became unlikely. But it isn't due to a lack of interest.