Torii Hunter Signing Is Hard To Figure

And back to the first point.  Somebody has to play in the OF.  If not Hunter then who?

By most accounts, Hunter stopped "playing OF" a couple years ago.  Even if that's where he jogs out to during defensive innings.

Man.....theleviathon and I agree super strongly on something, and Seth also agrees with us.....something is really wrong here.

Mentoring, who? One of those he should be mentoring will now be in the minors (Rosario), because Torii has his spot. Hitting? No one has mentioned that he has spent several years hitting in front of Miggy. If that does not increase your diet of middle in fastballs nothing will. I wonder if he has ever cured his love of low outside sliders with men on base? Defense? While one can argue metrics to an extent, they do point in a direction. Arcia was the third worst RF last year. My eyes would agree. Hunter was the worst. This move will not make it any easier to sign a FA pitcher. Who want to pitch with that outfield behind them? Why don't we just move Kirby's statue into CF, that would complete the scenario! Sorry about the negativity, but I never ever thought this would really happen. Btw, in closing, his taking the money means winning means nothing to him, only the cash!

It's important to note, the Twins were always going to bring in a veteran OFer.  And it's now all too obvious, in Hunter's case, they weren't going to accept "no" for an answer, if at all possible (the last few public quotes from the Hunter camp indicate they played some tough negotiating hard ball with the Twins to up the final number).... somewhat inexplicably, there are other, younger, better veteran OFers who would have signed for less, maybe even on a one-year deal (Rios).  The Molitor and Guardado stuff put it over the top for me, the Twins have been linked with exactly nobody else in the OF all fall.  

You ask about Hunter's plate protection, it's pretty clear to start out anyway, that's going to be Mauer.

On the "money being the only thing" you mentioned, I'm starting to buy the theory of an "arrangement" as part of the deal- ie, that the Twins pledge to send him to a prime contender in July.  It makes sense, in that rather than guessing on which team has the best shot now, market himself to the top 3 or 4 most likely best-shot teams in July.

is this true? Those deals last winter were on paper nonguaranteed fliers, although the fact that they were effectively guaranteed otherwise indeed made them much worse. But they still involved legitimately small amounts of money and only came later in FA after we already signed several pitchers.

They took up roster space, it isn't about money, but roster space and opportunity to try to find upside. 

It's a one year deal and Rosario and Buxton probably aren't quite ready, so I'm not upset.  There seems to be quite an overreaction to Hunter's poor defense though.  IF they put him in RF, his defense is going to be just fine.  His awful -18.3 UZR last year was caused entirely by his -18.4 range factor, meaning if it weren't for his decreased range, his defense would have been decent.

 

Clearly his range was going to be magnified in cavernous Comerica Park, if they stick him in RF at Target Field, he'll be moving from one of the parks that demands the most range from it's rightfielder to one of the parks that demands the least.

 

Arcia's problem in RF wasn't his range, but the terrible angles he took and his confusion with the wall.  His range factor was only -4.4.  That should indicate one of two things; either Hunter's range problems are 4x worse than Arcia's, which sounds completely illogical, or the difference between ball parks has an extremely large impact on the perception of the outfielder.

 

I want a young team, so I wasn't too interested in Hunter, but this is going to be far from the disaster movie it is being made out to be.

And moving Arcia to LF is going to help him take better routes how?

And moving Arcia to LF is going to help him take better routes how?

I'm trying to wrap my head around that image,  as I've posted elsewhere, could it be that he's going to be a part-time DH/part-time OF, with some more OF help coming in?  Would Hunter and Arcia share both of those duties in RF with another veteran being brought in for either CF or LF?

No but at least he won't have the wall to deal with.  If Arcia doesn't improve, he's going to to be a liability no matter where he plays. 

I just don't think the guy was born with the instincts for the OF, I'm not sure more reps will help to improve significantly in RF, but changing positions and starting all over again likely won't really help, either.  

That narrative doesn't really fit with Span's career path. He looked pretty marginal for 5 years here with Hunter.

I think, from what I've read from players, it's Hunter's encouragement that has been helpful.  He's not going to make a bad player good.  But he might be able to get a player to better understand the daily grind, the problems of giving away at bats, leaving personal stuff at home, not worrying too much about an 0-7 stretch etc etc which might make them better at baseball.

A lot of people in LA loved how Hunter kept the team together after the young pitcher was killed in that car accident. 

That's exactly the conclusion I came to last night as I was writing my article for Knuckleballs. It's the only way this makes sense from Hunter's perspective. Talking about "coming home" is all well and good, but he wouldn't make this move solely out of some emotional attachment to Terry Ryan and the Twins.

 

1-He's getting good money for a 1 year deal, and 2-While I'm not sure Ryan would make a commitment to trading him in July, I don't doubt for a moment that the possibility was discussed. "We have some young outfielders that are close to being MLB ready. If they are, and if there's a deal out there that makes sense for us, we'll do all we can to set you up with a postseason contender. We've done that for others and we would do that for you in the same circumstances."

 

Despite what Texas, Baltimore or Seattle might look like now, there's no way for him to be sure those teams won't just be on the fringe of contention in July. His best strategy for being better positioned to make a postseason run is if he's traded to a team that needs him then.

 

I called it the Josh Willingham gambit and it's the only thing that makes this whole thing logical from Hunter's perspective.

I agree with all of this.

We're in deep doo-doo. Me too.

Yikes!

Then put the 39 year old in LF, and keep the young guy at his natural position. Then I only hate the deal a little, not with the passion of 1000000000 burning suns*

*ok, that's an exaggeration