Rundown: Twins Cold Stove, New Beat Writers and More

I am going to provide a theory as to why this alludes many. There is no disrespect intended here. It’s purely an observation. Fans could care less about profitability and profitability is right at the top of the list of a GM's responsibilities. 

 

If you say this position eludes you, you are saying you can’t understand why the Twins would not invest 10s or millions with a low probability of success. I would absolutely love it if the Twins did not care about profitability but the reasons they don’t manage the business certainly don’t elude me.

You may not mean any disrespect, but i think your radar is on the blitz, my friend. As has been pointed out before, a MAJORITY of your frequent contributors here do a great job of putting themselves in the GM's shoes and have as good a handle of the concept of profitability as you do. Whenever you say one of us can't understand something? That statement is dripping with condescension.

You make such thoughtful, insightful comments. I for one just respectfully ask you to reconsider your viewpoint about the level of understanding you think the rest of us have. Case in point: many of our pals here put together offseason blueprints. MOST of them carefully considered the business side of things, and did so with dexterity. A lot of them were quite impressive.

As for your own understanding of the business side of things, let me make one observation. You mention the notion of investing tens of millions with a low probability of success. Frankly, I see comparatively few ideas here that fit that description. I see many more ideas where the TD'er is suggesting a move that has a decent probability of success. Moves that don't financially cripple the operation. Acquisitions of assets with liquidity, i.e. players who can be flipped, or discarded without real damage. Moves that will boost wins, boost attendance, and probably boost profitability.

Yes, there are annoying exceptions, that small handful of ignorant ranters about how the Pohlads owe it to us the cook the Pepsi books and sneak that cash out and over to the Twin's tills, but they're few and far between. And when someone argues that Paxton at $130/6 is a good idea, just as many comment that it's a deal that they're happy the team passed on. Because they want sustainable success too, and they respect and grasp the business side of things like you do.

You may not mean any disrespect, but i think your radar is on the blitz, my friend. As has been pointed out before, a MAJORITY of your frequent contributors here do a great job of putting themselves in the GM's shoes and have as good a handle of the concept of profitability as you do. Whenever you say one of us can't understand something? That statement is dripping with condescension.

 

You make such thoughtful, insightful comments. I for one just respectfully ask you to reconsider your viewpoint about the level of understanding you think the rest of us have. Case in point: many of our pals here put together offseason blueprints. MOST of them carefully considered the business side of things, and did so with dexterity. A lot of them were quite impressive.

 

As for your own understanding of the business side of things, let me make one observation. You mention the notion of investing tens of millions with a low probability of success. Frankly, I see comparatively few ideas here that fit that description. I see many more ideas where the TD'er is suggesting a move that has a decent probability of success. Moves that don't financially cripple the operation. Acquisitions of assets with liquidity, i.e. players who can be flipped, or discarded without real damage. Moves that will boost wins, boost attendance, and probably boost profitability.

 

Yes, there are annoying exceptions, that small handful of ignorant ranters about how the Pohlads owe it to us the cook the Pepsi books and sneak that cash out and over to the Twin's tills, but they're few and far between. And when someone argues that Paxton at $130/6 is a good idea, just as many comment that it's a deal that they're happy the team passed on. Because they want sustainable success too, and they respect and grasp the business side of things like you do.

I was quite specific the inability was related to the relative value placed on financial performance. Complete disregard for the financial implications does not mean someone is incapable of understanding. Are you going to tell me the difference in desire to spend between fans and the FO does not have a very high correlation to the difference in weight put on profitability between the two groups.

I agree that some TDers have put forth reasonable plans. What the he## does that have to do with the this specific conversation which is why some people can't understand why the Twins would not spend every available payroll dollar. Where your new argument is concerned, don't tell me I don't understand the risk / investment side of things. If you understand how this is done in a business environment, show us the actual calculation of the cumulative risk associated with Buxton / Sano / The BP even Rosario who sucked the 2nd half, the bottom 3 rotation spots, injury, probability of success with the FAs that would be essential to putting together a contender. Then, tell me the odds of success are good. Show me the financial projections. There has been absolutely zero data / content presented that measured risk / return or the probability that any given plan would result in X number of wins. What has been presented here is ideas that would no doubt make the twins better. I have not seen a single projection of wins or the revenue implications or risk assessment. 

What has the FO accomplished the last 2 years then? Edit: yes, I know the coaching staff hasn't been here two years but if you're a FO and you're on year 3 and you've accomplished nothing and your year 3 plan is to do nothing to improve your crummy roster and just evaluate your new coaches, then I think we've got a problem.

 

A good team doesn't take a full year just to evaluate their coaches impact on their mediocre roster. Have you seen our current roster? If every pitcher on our team had their best season in 2019, we still wouldn't be a world series caliber team.

I don't disagree with your sentiment and as a (potential) ticket buyer I sure hope they do something.  I just don't see them doing much this offseason - a couple of role players, a relief pitcher, more buy low candidates to minor league deals who will end up getting way too many at bats on the big club during the season.

"Show me the financial projections. There has been absolutely zero data / content presented that measured risk / return or the probability that any given plan would result in X number of wins."

I'm sorry, but this is just so much silliness. 

Please educate us. Tell us exactly what Paxton's production will be in 2019. How many innings, starts, ERA, the exact number of wins he's going to produce. 

Tell us how to plug those numbers, numbers apparently so obvious to a credentialed businessperson like you, into one of them there spreadsheet thingies. Now do it for five more years, and where's the column about changes in attendance on the days Paxton pitches, by the way?

I'll take the intuitive capabilities of MOST of us over whatever garbage you're about to throw onto a spreadsheet. The performance volatility of professional baseball players turns your "probability" analysis into just so much pablum. FO's place bets and do a lot of educated guessing. So do other businesses, as you know from doing strategic planning for your own business. We're all just guessing here, and I personally come here to enjoy the impressive guesswork.

And we're not ignoring the financial side of things. I'm afraid that's a figment of your own imagination, no disrespect intended.

"Show me the financial projections. There has been absolutely zero data / content presented that measured risk / return or the probability that any given plan would result in X number of wins."

 

I'm sorry, but this is just so much silliness. 

 

Please educate us. Tell us exactly what Paxton's production will be in 2019. How many innings, starts, ERA, the exact number of wins he's going to produce. 

 

Tell us how to plug those numbers, numbers apparently so obvious to a credentialed businessperson like you, into one of them there spreadsheet thingies. Now do it for five more years, and where's the column about changes in attendance on the days Paxton pitches, by the way?

 

I'll take the intuitive capabilities of MOST of us over whatever garbage you're about to throw onto a spreadsheet. The performance volatility of professional baseball players turns your "probability" analysis into just so much pablum. FO's place bets and do a lot of educated guessing. So do other businesses, as you know from doing strategic planning for your own business. We're all just guessing here, and I personally come here to enjoy the impressive guesswork.

 

And we're not ignoring the financial side of things. I'm afraid that's a figment of your own imagination, no disrespect intended.

Baseball is loaded with predictive analysis, is it not? FIP, defensive metrics in general, WAR, etc are all predictive in nature. It's interesting that this board screamed for an analytics driven approach and no that such an approach would likely prove the odds to be long, you want an intuitive approach which is what we had previously.

Actually, the approach could be to measure the probability of each individual factor required for the teach to achieve success. IE What is the projected WAR for Buxton / Sano and the entire rest of the team. I would agree if you were to say that model requires a lot of assumption. We could instead look at a much larger set of data while using a somewhat more intuitive approach. We could ask what are the odds of building a BP given the state of ours. What does history suggest. What are the odds of Buxton or Sano producing at the level needed for the Twins to contend. The Twins analytics team could put together a very credible estimate based on the history of all the similar players who failed or succeeded in the past. What are the Odds we get 1st half Rosario and the 64 wRC+ second half Rosario and so on.

Revenue is a tough one. I have read several articles trying to get a grip on revenue drivers and the KPIs are unclear and inconsistent. The Twins had stated in the past that they base payroll on previous year's revenue which would make the revenue estimates a moot point and I can see the wisdom in this approach based on the difficulty to forecast revenue.

We can also look at history to understand the impact on profits when a team invests and does not perform.In 2017, MIami / Detroit / and Baltimore all invested and did not perform. Collectively, they lost $125M. The top 7 in terms of profit were all contenders who spent within their budget even though they obviously had room to spend significantly more. The Cub / Phillies / Red Sox / Giants / Astros / Dodgers and Brewers combined for $539M in profit for an average of $77M per team. The Twins made $23M by the way in a year they went to the playoffs. Kind of puts the relative focus on profits in perspective.

If it were our money or we were bankers or Venture Capitalists we would would demand hard analytics for revenue, margins, capital requirements, competitive analysis and risk assessment. 10s of millions are not invested based on intuition. 

What about ticket sales going up because they sign someone like Bryce Harper or trade for someone like Trout?  I know those are extremes but because we have had nothing in the last 10 years ticket sales are down or do you think they really don't care as long as they are making a profit.  We think we deserve a competitive team and they want profits?  Doesn't something have to give?  Get us back on track, won't that increase ticket sales that leads to more profit?  Was listening to MLB XM radio last night and they had Cards fans excited to go out and buy jerseys?  When is the last time we had that excitement?  Not since Target Field opened that I remember?

Baseball is loaded with predictive analysis, is it not? FIP, defensive metrics in general, WAR, etc are all predictive in nature.

10s of millions are not invested based on intuition.

I get your arguments. Decision-wise, I'd side with you on a majority of them. 

I give many TD contributors credit for sensitivity about the extra financial capacity of the top revenue producing teams. 

Derek Falvey and all of his minions are acutely aware of the limited predictive power of all those metrics. That's why they, like other progressive organizations, are spending greater resources on things they might be able to better control, such as mental and physical health, fitness and training, instruction, etc.

I very much disagree that intuition takes a back seat.

In my first job, I was mentored by this old curmudgeon who'd been in the investment business since 1936. He was the figurehead at a prestigious blue-blood investment firm in NYC, like for 45 years. For almost half that time, the previous 21 years in fact, the Dow traded in a range between 800 to 1000. My first week on the job, Newsweek's lead article was questioning if the stock market was "dead". This old fart was out there screaming that it was time to hop on and enjoy the ride, because the Dow was going to shoot through 3600 "like sugar through a tin horn".The basis for his conviction? Inflation was about to die, because Reagan had just fired the air traffic controllers. That was his signal. Not one useful financial extrapolation. Just a solid contextual understanding of the long term history of financial markets.

I hope to heck this FO respects whatever intuitive capacity it has around there, and I think they do, as indicated by their retention of talent evaluators and their stated goal of valuing both analytics and scouting expertise.

Mainly I hope their intuition is "right" about Sano and Buxton, lol.

ESan missing the year was 100% predictable. Were they in on Darvish, because I keep reading how stupid that deal was.....that signing him was a bad idea. They could have called up Astudillo earlier to catch, they didn't. Then when they did, he didn't catch. This isn't just about bad luck. Oh, and lots of people said they should acquire another OF, in case Buxton or Kepler or Rosario wasn't good. They weren't close on Ohtani. 

 

They signed a bunch of 1 year deals, and a guy that they knew wouldn't play last year. They did nothing to fix this year, last year (well, maybe Austin, but they just signed his doppleganger).

Mike,

They signed 4 players that made the 25 man roster. Reed / Rodney / Morrison & Lynn. Reed was a 2 year deal. Morrison and Rodney had a 2nd year team option. Lynn was one year. Is it really fair to characterize Morrison and Rodney as 1 year deals when they had a team option. Would you agree that 1 year with a 2nd year option is a much more advantageous position to be in for the team? While I suppose you could make a case you are technically accurate, your portrayal of the situation is misleading.