The Twins Shouldn't Trade for an Ace

5 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

He is not arguing semantics at all.  You are both arguing for a given strategy.  Chpettit19 as provided numerous examples that support a given strategy.  You are insisting your strategy is better while providing no validation.  The best form of validation is pretty straight forward.  Look at playoff or 90 win teams with below average revenue for any season, preferably multiple seasons.  How have the various means of acquisition contributed to those teams.  I have posted these facts on multiple occasions.  Acquisition of established top of the rotation pitching through free agency or trading for prospects is almost nonexistent.  Trading established players for prospects has had a far greater impact.  Players that were drafted or acquired as prospects far outnumber these other two methods combined.

You have put a lot of effort into repeating this argument over and over.  It would be great if you put a little of that energy into a meaningful / unbiased assessment of the relative effectiveness of acquisition methods.  It's not hard to do with fangraphs.  Take the 90 win teams with below average revenue from any season.  List all of the players by WAR above whatever threshold you elect to use.  I used 1.5 WAR.  If you do this, there is absolutely no question of the value of building from within.

The reason is pretty simple.  1 WAR in free agency cost $8M+.  When you have half the revenue of top teams, by definition you must be more effective per dollar spent.  The notion that trades for established pitching is a good bet is absurd if you actually look at the history of these trades.  I listed numerous trades where established pitching was traded for prospects that had major roles in building playoff teams.  Chpettit19 listed very recent trades for pitching that did not produce much. 

Show us validation.  Show us your insistence there is no plan can be backed up by facts that validate your position.  That would be what is known as a valid argument.  

No, listing a couple starters having a down year in SD doesn't invalidate my talking points anymore so than me rattling off successful FA signings/trade acquisitions proves I'm correct. I could easily ask you to list examples of teams that started with a rotation equivalent to Bundy + prospects, refused to spend in FA or acquire talent via trades, and was competing within 2 years, but that's an exercise in futility, particularly with you.   

Oh, you mean the number of teams willing to pay via FA or trade to acquire top end talent is small? You literally cannot acquire something another team doesn't have, i.e. you can't trade for a player until that individual has been drafted by/signed to another team, so of course the "total impact," of the collective is greater. You're not actually arguing anything by pointing that out. 

Mike just posted an interesting FG article about managing prospect expectations and they touch on the team building aspect at the end. Check it out. 

1 hour ago, USAFChief said:

Again, this is simply not even close to true. 

You can list all the isolated examples you wish, but you're cherry picking, and even then you're overstating the case of even those few examples. The 2021 Rays, for example, didn't rely solely on their prospects. Among their top starters were Micheal Wacha, Rich Hill, and Tyler Glasnow. None of those are/were products of the Tampa system.

More importantly, you're focusing on the few prospects who eventually get there, while ignoring the approximately 1.6 kajillion prospects who never make any impact.

Prospects occasionally work out and become productive big leagures. Once in a great while, they become impact players.

But to suggest prospects have an equal chance of becoming productive big leaguers as players who ALREADY ARE productive big leaguers isn't a rational look at reality.

I don't think trading for Montas, for example, will get the Twins far in 2022 or 2023, at least not in isolation. The FO has put this team too far in the hole. But I'd wager large amounts of money Montas is a better MLB pitcher over these next 2 years  than any two Twins minor league pitchers you care to name. Deal?

Rasmussen was acquired midseason, and Collin McHugh made a handful of starts for them as well. When you break it down nearly 50% of the Rays' starts last season were made by pitchers that spent no time in their minor league system.

This whole thing went off the rails when the risk of signing a high value FA was equated to running out a rotation of Bundy + prospects. There's no coming back from that. 

On 2/27/2022 at 4:16 PM, roger said:

What a fantastic discussion.  But are we missing something.  Could the FO be planning on piggy-backing 8 starters with two pitching 3-4 innings each every fourth game?  If they are, they might sign someone or do a lessor Odorizzi type trade.  Or maybe they believe they have those 8 arms with a couple more likely ready by June?

Good idea, but does the current roster size support this model?

7 hours ago, USAFChief said:

Again, this is simply not even close to true. 

You can list all the isolated examples you wish, but you're cherry picking, and even then you're overstating the case of even those few examples. The 2021 Rays, for example, didn't rely solely on their prospects. Among their top starters were Micheal Wacha, Rich Hill, and Tyler Glasnow. None of those are/were products of the Tampa system.

More importantly, you're focusing on the few prospects who eventually get there, while ignoring the approximately 1.6 kajillion prospects who never make any impact.

Prospects occasionally work out and become productive big leagures. Once in a great while, they become impact players.

But to suggest prospects have an equal chance of becoming productive big leaguers as players who ALREADY ARE productive big leaguers isn't a rational look at reality.

I don't think trading for Montas, for example, will get the Twins far in 2022 or 2023, at least not in isolation. The FO has put this team too far in the hole. But I'd wager large amounts of money Montas is a better MLB pitcher over these next 2 years  than any two Twins minor league pitchers you care to name. Deal?

If the context is acquisition strategies .... Glasnow was acquired for a SP (Archer) that by far the more established pitcher.  Michael Wacha has not broke 1 WAR since 2017.  41 y/o Rich Hill had not broke 1 WAR since 2018.  I really don't understand your point.  Are these really the type of acquisitions you believe will produce a contender.  Before you answer, we would all jump on a steal like Glasnow but that is a very rare case.  

I applaud the assessment method here where you are looking at the acquisition practice of playoff teams.  It's a lot more telling if you take 2-3 years of these teams.  If you do this the relative effectiveness of the various acquisition methods is very evident.  Anyone who really wants to know could assemble the information relatively easily.  

17 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

If the context is acquisition strategies .... Glasnow was acquired for a SP (Archer) that by far the more established pitcher.  Michael Wacha has not broke 1 WAR since 2017.  41 y/o Rich Hill had not broke 1 WAR since 2018.  I really don't understand your point.  Are these really the type of acquisitions you believe will produce a contender.  Before you answer, we would all jump on a steal like Glasnow but that is a very rare case.  

I applaud the assessment method here where you are looking at the acquisition practice of playoff teams.  It's a lot more telling if you take 2-3 years of these teams.  If you do this the relative effectiveness of the various acquisition methods is very evident.  Anyone who really wants to know could assemble the information relatively easily.  

This entire thread is a debate about whether or not the Twins should be spending in FA and/or trades to improve the rotation. The Rays were brought up as an example of why the Twins should cling to every arm they have, and when it was pointed out that TBs rotation relied rather heavily on FA signings and trade acquisitions you shifted the goalposts. Love it. 

WAR for Wacha and Hill isn't relevant to the point that was made; it's a purposeful distraction. 

2 hours ago, KirbyDome89 said:

This entire thread is a debate about whether or not the Twins should be spending in FA and/or trades to improve the rotation. The Rays were brought up as an example of why the Twins should cling to every arm they have, and when it was pointed out that TBs rotation relied rather heavily on FA signings and trade acquisitions you shifted the goalposts. Love it. 

WAR for Wacha and Hill isn't relevant to the point that was made; it's a purposeful distraction. 

You simply don't understand or refuse to acknowledge the point.  The most salient point of this discussion is acquisition methodology.  What practices / strategies have produced playoff teams.  If a SP produces 1 WAR it has no relevance how that player was acquired.

16 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

I guess I don't have any problem letting these near-ready pitchers show us what they have.  I don't think you HAVE to trade for an ace, nor do I think you shouldn't trade for one because of protecting young, controllable assets.  I tend to think a smart combination of both strategies is the real path forward and consistently successful franchises show that.  (The Cardinals are a rough approximation of the Twins and use both strategies quite effectively)

This tends to be lost anytime the topic comes up. The mere mention of trading for a single player ruffles feathers to such a degree that any such transaction becomes "selling the farm," "mortgaging the future," or is characterized as a stupid baseball decision, despite the fact that even the best rotations in the game rely on help outside of the organization. 

I'm not tied to Montas either, and I've said as much, but if the FO truly believes that a few members of this prospect group will lift the team back to WS contention, then I see a ton of value, both presently and in the future, in acquiring a stable rotation piece around which to integrate the upcoming arms. Obviously you'd want that stability for more than just 2 years. 

52 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

You simply don't understand or refuse to acknowledge the point.  The most salient point of this discussion is acquisition methodology.  What practices / strategies have produced playoff teams.  If a SP produces 1 WAR it has no relevance how that player was acquired.

Oh but I did. Remember that part about the collective always being greater than any slice you wish to cut from it? Again, that's not even an actual counter-argument. It's also why I didn't take the bait on going down the WAR rabbit hole.