markos

There is decent evidence that Kepler had a break out last year, but it just got buried under some bad BABIP luck. His BB% was up significantly, his K% was down significantly. He "barreled" a higher percentage of contact. His statcast exit velocity metrics were better. But his overall batting line was about the same as previous years because he ended up with a .236 BABIP rather than something near his career average (.265-ish). Projection systems are already expecting him to break out next year. Anyway, this is a situation where I think it makes sense to lock up a player early. Kepler is already arbitration eligible. A break out next year will guarantee him a significant raise both for 2020 and the rest of his arbitration years, at which point a team friendly extension will be much less attractive for him.

Yeah, I probably overstated with 3-4 WAR improvement. But it depends a lot on how one divvies up playing time (Castro is projected to be the worst, even though he gets most PAs) and if one factors in pitch framing (Garver is one of the worst in baseball; Realmuto is above-average). 2-3 WAR is probably more accurate.

That is probably true in the abstract, but I have a hard time seeing what pitcher is going to be available over the next 12 months. The top-20 projected pitchers for 2019 all play for the Red Sox, Mets, Nationals, Astros, Indians, Yankees, Phillies, Rays, Rockies, Pirates, Dodgers, Diamondbacks. Of that group, the only team that is remotely rebuilding right now is Diamondbacks, but I'm not sure that Greinke (age and contract) or Robby Ray (health, limited team control) are pitchers that would merit that kind of trade package. The Rockies might blow things up if this year goes poorly, but they are a weird organization that is hard to get a read on. Otherwise, every other team is making moves that indicate that they are expecting to compete in 2020. The other thing is that a determination made today about whether the team is competitive is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right now, Fangraphs is projecting the Twins to be a 83-win team in 2019, currently 7th in the AL. Guessing at the win distribution around that mean, it implies that there is something like a 50% chance that the Twins either hold or sell at the 2019 deadline, and maybe just a 20% chance that they are a strong buyers. It would kind of defeat the point if a pitcher like Thor did become available in July but the Twins aren't buying. And if they sell/hold and end up <=83 wins for the season, won't that be used to argue that they aren't true contenders and should sit out the 2020 offseason as well? But add 3-4 WAR from Realmuto (who is absolutely available today), and that vaults the Twins ahead of the Rays and Angels, cuts 40% of the Indian's advantage, and the Twins are most likely buyers at the deadline. And from that inflection point, it isn't hard to see them make a run at 90 wins. That may not be enough to win the division, but it certainly provides enough evidence that the team is a contender and can be built upon going into the 2020 season.

Does anyone have any info on the Grandal offer (terms, etc)? I though going into this offseason that he would have been a very good fit for this team.

I wasn't expecting to see "best shape of his life" reports in January, but I guess spring training is right around the corner.

Would you agree that there would be ample examples of successful mid tier teams building through specifically high end FAs and trading for establish players? I feel like there is quite a bit of "No true Scotsman" going on in your arguments on this thread, so I'm not sure any kind of evidence will change your mind. But here are some examples that I think are pertinent. The Brewers were already brought up, but you said don't count because you can't understand how they won 96 games with such bad pitching. The Royals were brought up with the Shields trade, but you said they don't count because the Royals were better after Shields left (as if they would have been better without him while he was there?), ignoring that the whole point of the trade was to bridge the gap between their position players (who were in the big leagues) and their pitching prospects (who were a few years away). You just brought up the Diamondbacks, who signed Greinke. But you said that doesn't count because it was only one piece. The Reds had a nice little run at the beginning of the decade, and they spent a fair amount of prospect assets to acquire Rolen, Choo and Latos. But I'm sure the Reds don't count because they didn't sign any high end FAs. Or they weren't successful enough. Or they didn't "build through" these players. You can take your pick. The Blue Jays signed Russell Martin and traded for Josh Donaldson, and they had a few years where they were pretty successful. But maybe they weren't successful enough for your threshold. Or they don't qualify as a mid tier team. The Cardinals won a World Series in 2011 with Matt Holliday and Lance Berkman as their 2nd and 3rd best position players - both fairly high priced free agents. But I'm not sure if they cross your threshold of being "high end FAs", so maybe they don't count. And of course, the Cardinals punch above their market size when it comes to payroll, so their long stretch of competitiveness probably doesn't count - despite their trades (like for Ozuna and Goldschmidt) and signings (like Fowler). The Mariners just had a quasi-successful run (despite being run by some extremely mediocre GMs) in large part because of Cano and Cruz - both FAs. But they probably weren't good enough overall to count. And Seattle is probably too big of market. The Tigers traded for prime Miguel Cabrera, signed a bunch of high end FAs, traded for other established players. They were one of the best teams in baseball between 2011-2014, and had a nice 8 year run of competitive baseball. But they probably don't count because their owner allowed them to run high payrolls. The Indians signed Edwin Encarnacion, traded for Andrew Miller. But this is probably supplementing an existing core, rather than building through those moves. So they don't count. The Nationals have signed Werth, Scherzer and now Corbin. They made a big trade to get Adam Eaton. Does this example count? The Rangers nearly one back to back World Series at the beginning of this decade, and arguably their best player was Adrian Beltre, who they signed as a free agent. They also paid big bucks to get Darvish and Joe Nathan. While not a mid-tier team, the Astros have gone out and acquired one or more established veterans with multiple years of team control via the trade market every year since 2015: Gattis, McCann, Giles, Fiers, Verlander, Cole. So there are 10 examples from the past eight years who I think answer your question. But I'm sure you can lawyer your way out of accepting any of them as valid evidence, because your question is super subjection to what is or isn't "mid tier", "successful", "building through", "high end", "establish players". But only 14 or the bottom 20 teams in revenue have made the playoffs since 2011, and 9 of them show up on my list.

My (admittedly quite back-of-the-envelope) framework for team-building is something like this: Team WAR + 48 ~~ Wins for the season To be considered a solid contender, 90 wins is a good target. Therefore, a team needs to have ~42 WAR. Divvying that up across 25 roster spots is hard, so I use the following simplification. A 5 WAR bullpen is definitely top-10. So as a first approximation, just dedicate 5 WAR to bullpen. 37 WAR is remaining. Rather than worrying about starters/bench/playing time, just look focus on the actual positions. 9 spots in the lineup. 5 slots in the rotation. 14 total positions. 37 WAR / 14 positions= 2.6 WAR per positions. So, on average, a team needs to have 2.6 WAR per position in order to be a contender. Looking at the Steamer projections for the Twins, they are projecting 24.1 WAR on the position player side. That is a contender-worthy lineup: for reference it basically as good as the Astros/Rays/Nationals were last year, and better than the Braves/Indians/Mets/Brewers/Rays current projections. But it isn't enough to make up for weakness in the rotation. And given the broad depth on the position player side, the only way to improve things is by adding legitimate 3+ WAR players.

If you adjust for MLB revenue growth, 8/250 is about 40% of the AAV value of ARod's deal. It would be significantly less than deals signed by other prominent free agents of that time period, like Manny, Giambi, Griffey.

MLB overall revenue is literally 3X what it was in 2001. So as a percentage of overall revenue, ARod's contract today would be something like $75M/yr.

It took me a couple readings to figure out what Nick is talking about (I think the headline is a little misleading...). Anyway, I think the article would have benefited by laying out a hypothetical state of the Twins rotation on March 15th, something like the following scenario: "Gibson's already-once-repaired UCL blows out again. He is out for the season. Romero's shoulder has been a little sore, so he was shut down early in Spring Training for rest and there is no way for him to build up innings until mid-May at the earliest. The coaching staff is concerned about Pineda's durability coming off basically an entire season off, and really want him in the 5 slot of the rotation so they can regularly skip starts during the first part of the season." So then, the question is "Does it make sense for the Twins to have a veteran pitcher on a minor league deal in camp?" Personally, I have almost zero faith that Stewart or Gonsalves will be effective big league pitchers, and so I would welcome any additional competition at that tier. Basically: Pitchers I'm comfortable having in the rotation: Berrios Gibson Odorizzi Pineda Meija Romero Pitchers that I don't want to have to rely on in any context on Opening Day: Gonsalves Stewart Littell De Jong If two or more of the first group are out for whatever reason (injury, performance), then having an additional, veteran arm (or two) in camp on a minor league deal makes sense. More options; higher probability at least one will break out/bounce back.

While I mostly agree with the first part (particularly Cruz), I disagree with the second. Despite Sano's and Buxton's troubles, the Twins managed respectable performance at CF and 3B last year because the trio of Cave/Kepler/Grossman managed to keep both CF and RF basically average, and Escobar was above-average at 3B while he was there. So the Twins won't be get additional value over 2018 unless Buxton and Sano are above-average performers.

I just don't see what underlying elements of his performance we should be hanging our hats on in such a small sample. For the assertion that Gonsalves doesn't get hit hard, it is certainly true that he was able to limit hits, BABIP, and such in the minors. But all of the Statcast data seems to indicate that he got hit just as hard or harder than the average big league pitcher. The fact that he only allowed 2 HRs (which makes his final HR numbers, like HR/9, HR/FB%, etc, look good) instead of 3 HRs (which would put everything at roughly league-average) is hardly a difference that anyone should put a lot of faith into for his future performance. A big part of why he was able to do limit hard contact in the minors is because he was able to induce an obscene number of popups. (Seriously, his AVERAGE popup rate in the minors would be TWICE the rate of the MLB leader last year, deGrom.) His success at the end of the season wasn't because he got back to inducing popups (he didn't induce a single popup in his last three games); rather, he inverted his script and induced a ton of ground balls. Now, that would have been an interested topic for an article: "Did Gonsalves become a ground ball pitcher?" But for now, his margin for success in the majors is razor thin, and until I see evidence that he can actually miss bats or avoid walks, I'm not buying Gonsalves.

And even when the opposing players made contact, they had a .129 BABIP. Now, pitchers can control the quality of contact a little bit. That that is just ridiculous good luck.

I'm pretty sure Romero has 6 years of team control remaining.

That doesn't really explain why Rosario's OPS was .659 in April, or .683 in July before Escobar was traded. Rosario had two amazing months (May & June) surrounded by four months with sub-.670 OPS.

A few points on this: 1 - it is a relatively small sample of domination (~100 batters) 2 - 56% of the batters he faced were from KC, Det and Chi 3 - Relievers are pretty volatile year-over-year. 4 - The early projections aren't buying a breakout.

For me, it isn't just that other teams passed on him on waivers; rather, it is that the Rays had to put him on waivers to begin with to get him off their roster. That implies that literally no team was willing to trade anything of value for him and the Rays were left to dump him for nothing.

I'm not exactly sure why the shrug, as that is another data point that his HR rate in 2018 was a potential outlier. And I don't think you appreciate the relationship between HR/FB and FB%. If his HR/FB rate moves up to his career average (from 8.9% to 10.3%) in 2019, then he would need to drop his FB% to his career low (from 48.8% to 40.6%) in order to maintain the same number of overall home runs. If his HR/FB rate moves to league average (which he did exceed in 2016-2017), then he would basically need to become a GB pitcher to suppress HRs like he did in 2018. The bottom line for me is that there is enough evidence that Odorizzi should have given up 4-6 more HRs last year than he actually did, and there is plenty of research to suggest that the lack of HRs is, more likely than not, a product of the randomness of HRs rather than any particular skill that Odorizzi now possesses. So I'm making my predictions about Odorizzi's future effectiveness based on it being just randomness. Therefore, I feel completely comfortable saying that Odorizzi had a nice 2018 that wasn't exactly backed up by his underlying peripherals, and going forward I expect him to be worse, not better, than 2018. And if he is going to be worse than he was in 2018, I have no interest in a long term extension.

I think there are way too many warning signs with Odorizzi to consider signing him in long term. Mostly, his success this season (particularly after June 1st) was almost entirely about the fact that he, for whatever reason, gave up home runs on fly balls well below average for his career and relative to the rest of the league. His full season HR/FB rate (8.9%) was 6th best among qualified starters, and his post-June-1st rate was 4.6%, which would have led the league by a significant amount. This is why his xFIP for the season was 4.80, why Steamer is projecting a 4.90 ERA next year, and why BP's DRA stat suggests he was actually below replacement level last year. It is rare for pitchers to have a lot of control, year-to-year, over how many of their fly balls go over the fence, and I have a hard time believing that Odorizzi just stumbled into a skill where he is now the best in baseball a suppressing home runs.

That side-steps the question. How does someone earn a starting spot in spring training?

What exactly can Buxton do between now and Opening Day to earn the full time position?

This kind of analysis really helps illuminate my thoughts about this current team. They are in a position that they will likely miss the playoffs EVEN IF Buxton and Sano both break out next year. The top playoff teams in the AL in 2018 all had 50+ WAR. Even if Buxton and Sano combine for 10+ WAR next season, they are still going to be 7-10 WAR short of the competition.

The Statcast defensive metrics use the hang time of the ball and the distance that the defender needs to travel to determine the likelihood that the ball will be turned into an out. It is anything but subjective. The reason Buxton was better in 2017 is because he converted a significantly higher percentage of the low-likelihood plays than he did in 2016.

Between 2016 and 2017 combined, Addison Russell's OPS+ was 90. Buxton's was 92. Buxton had more bWAR and identical fWAR over that stretch as well despite Russell having 100 more PAs. Buxton was essentially Addison Russell for two straight seasons prior to his injury-riddled 2018.

Going off your business world example, this is how I would describe what happened to Buxton: Company hires a up-and-coming sales guy, enticing him with a large signing bonus. Sales guy doesn't quite meet the lofty expectations, but is still above average for the industry and profitable for the company. Sales guy gets in a serious car accident. Takes a few weeks off off. Tries coming back early, but isn't effective due to lingering head aches. His clients are temporary split to others in the company. He takes a leave of absence, then slowly works back to full time. Clients are gradually given back to him. At the point he is ready to go back to full time, company decides not to give him all his clients back until after the fiscal year (which is a month away) because he is too close to a sales threshold that would require them to pay him a bonus.