Terry Ryan: Still Employed

Yeah, let's compartmentalize the roster.  No sense even bidding on impact talent that's not starting pitchers.  It's not like that talent could be traded for a starting pitcher, or allow you to trade other players/prospects for starting pitchers.

This thread reminds me of the meme that the Twins were dumb for letting David Ortiz go.   When 29 teams make a mistake on a guy, I am not going to sit here and act like this is some huge organizational deficiency.  You can if you want, you and Mike seem happy to do so. 

Hey!  I just remembered!  Haven't there been a few decent starting pitchers to come out of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan recently?

 

I see TR was in the mix for Iwakuma (Sosnick-Cobbe client) in his first months back as GM, but he declined to blow away Seattle's modest offer.  I do not recall us pursuing any other international free agent pitchers.

Would you have wanted us to drop $170M on Tanaka last summer?  At the time?  Scouts were all over the board but nobody credible thought he was in the same ballpark as Darvish.  At the time it looked like ace money for a #2 starter.

What does the passage you quote have anything to do with Ortiz?  I am confused.

 

Again, you asked if there was anything TR could have done differently to speed the rebuild and return to contention.  I replied that instead of treading $100 million worth of 30+ year old water in domestic free agency (and complaining about getting stymied in your efforts to spend more there), similar investments in high-ceiling international free agents would have been better.  Small-market Oakland did it; division rival White Sox did it.  Rebuilding Cubs did it; Orioles tried it; I-don't-know-how-to-classify-them Seattle did it too.  Evidence suggests TR did nothing more than dip his toes into the Iwakuma pond, briefly, at the start of his new tenure.

 

If you didn't want to hear that answer, why did you ask the question?

 

Nowhere did "huge organizational deficiency" or David Ortiz come up.

Here is why I think it is the same thing.

Ortiz was OK here and never healthy.  We cut him.  Nobody gave the guy any money.  The team that did sign him had him on their bench for 3-4 months.  Then he turned into a hall of fame player.  People sit here and act like Terry Ryan had four aces with a king kicker and he folded the hand. Just bringing up his name invokes disgust for Terry Ryan 12 years later.

You guys are ripping Terry for not signing Cuban outfielders. 

One turned out to be an all star where the high bidder paid him only an AAV of $11M.  Clearly 29 GM's mis-judged the value of this guy.  The White Sox in a sense mis-judged him as well. They would have offered more if they knew just how good he was going to be in a blind bid scenario.

The Puig signing was ridiculed around the league at the time.  Scouts and GM's were wondering what the Dodgers were smoking.  Again, 29 GM's missed this.

Cespedes, it is not really clear to me that $9M a year is a good contract for him.

Translation, Terry deserves as much heat as 28 other GM's for "missing out" on two players and this line of attack is 99% hindsight. It doesn't strike me as an organizational flaw we need to focus on, nor are these players going to help our pitching staff out.

You're the one who has limited this to "Cuban outfielders" and specifically just two of them.

 

Let me preface this by saying I'm not criticizing TR for not signing any specific guy, but since TR took over in 2011, here is a list of "major" international free agents which TR has taken little or no documented interest in:

 

Darvish

Cespedes

Iwakuma

Chen

Wada

Aoki

Soler

Ryu

Puig

Gonzalez

Abreu

Diaz

Arruebarrena

Guerrero

Castillo

Despaigne

 

That's just off the top of my head.  The max guarantee in this group was $72 mil for 6-7 years, but most of them for around Willingham money (~$25 mil) or less, almost all controllable for 6+ years.  13 different organizations signed the above guys, some of them signed multiples.  Expand it a couple years earlier (and throw in the Yankees/Tanaka blockbuster, which I intentionally excluded), and you will find a majority of MLB organizations made some kind of major Cuban/Asian player investment.

 

Yet some unknown modest offer to Sosnick-Cobbe client Iwakuma (who ultimately signed with Seattle for $1.9 mil guaranteed, although he left money on the table) is the only documented interest I can find from TR.  Why?  No room in our 2012-2015+ organization?  Liked the domestic FA market better?  Doesn't like bidding?  Bill Smith's bad experience with Nishioka?  Fear of the unknown?

 

And I will repeat: I don't necessarily think this is a fireable offense, but in combination with his actions and statements about the domestic FA market, it's an area I would question TR's strategy (or lack thereof), certainly in light of his recent negative assessment of Gardy's role in the rebuild (the topic of this thread).

It seemed like the Cuban guys were referenced a lot more and the only Asian player up until a few posts ago was Chen.

I probably used mainly Cuban as examples, but in my larger point, I tried avoiding focusing on any particular players to avoid the dreaded "so-and-so wouldn't have signed here for X reason" response.

 

In doing some research for my post, I've actually surprised myself at the number of big international signings there have been over the past 3-4 years, and how many teams found themselves in on the action.

We got Nishi, so I am guesing your analysis had us top 5 in Asia as well.