Otto von Ballpark

Dozier posted a career high OPS/OPS+ at age 27 -- and you're expecting "a bit more" from him? Suzuki posted a career high OPS+ (by a good margin) at age 30, Pinto was a league-average hitter, and Fryer only got 81 PA -- and you're expecting "quite a bit more" from the catcher position? Also, you have high expectations for Mauer and Arcia based on August and September... but you ignore that Dozier and Suzuki had second half OPS figures much closer to their career averages than their first half marks.

You posted this in another thread, and I corrected it there too, but apparently you didn't see it. First off, looking at game logs, from July 11 until the end of the season, that trio only allowed 16 inherited runners to score. Not sure how you come up with 21 for a subset of that. Second, even though "awful" period you define (Aug. 1 - Sep. 15) contains all 16 of those runs, they received a total of 39 inherited runners during that span. That's 41%, which is indeed worse than the Twins season percentage of 31%, or the 2014 AL rate of 29%, but it only represents a difference of 3 runs worse than average over that span.

Zach Duke just posted an 11.4 K/9 in MLB. Wheeler has never pitched out of the pen as a pro, Gilmartin has one relief appearance (a rehab one in rookie ball). O'Rourke is an interesting name, but he's almost 27 years old with 1 inning of AAA ball to his credit.

I think the only guys you can't remove/replace on the 40-man during the winter are the prospects you add to the 40-man in November (for Rule 5 purposes). So you can't add a bunch of guys to protect them from the Rule 5 draft, then drop them immediately afterward. Other 40-man guys can be dropped and replaced at any time.

To add to jokin's excellent 4 point response above, I don't think contention in 2015 has to be THAT remote of a likelihood, especially if we are aggressive with some higher-upside FA. We were a 75 win pythag team last year, despite some glaring weaknesses. Target those weaknesses immediately through FA, and deploy Meyer/May as bullpen weapons or SP reinforcements (and similarly use Rosario/Sano/Buxton if you can), and all of a sudden, 2015 doesn't look that bad. Not saying I'd bet on that team contending, but I'd sure prefer betting on them through some 1-year contracts than betting on our prospects and 2014 leftovers filling those holes immediately in any meaningful way. (And those holes are still big enough to accommodate a couple FA and any prospects that want to force their way into regular action.)

I might pursue both, with the likelihood you could only land one. Not sure if two bounceback guys, who absolutely need playing time to rebuild their value, want to go to the same place at the same time. Particularly here, now that our rotation isn't quite the vast wasteland it was in 2012-2013.

If our rotation is "just as bad" next year, that's not solely because we took a chance on Masterson or whomever. It will also be because (some combination of) Gibson doesn't step forward, Nolasco doesn't rebound, Hughes regresses, etc. (And while nobody likes to lose, I don't buy "discouragement" as a serious factor holding back our young hitters.) If Masterson is bad again, and he's worse than your other starters, you can trade/disable him by early July, just like Cleveland did, just like we did with Nolasco, even earlier with Pelfrey, etc. But with two rotation spots that should be up for grabs in spring training, that's a chance I am willing to take with one of those spots for a couple months.

MLB Trade Rumors predicts a one-year, $12 mil deal for Masterson. Is that serious money, in modern MLB? If the guy is healthy, he's one year removed from being a legit All-Star, and he gets the same guaranteed cash as Pelfrey last winter?

To be fair, B-Ref's park factors now have Target Field similar to Texas and Chicago of recent years.

Tampering? They were trade negotiations. If the Red Sox or Yankees weren't negotiating in good faith, then the Twins let themselves be used, simple as that. Probably criminal to force that situation upon Bill Smith a couple months into his tenure (and borderline criminal to make Smith the GM in the first place), although even Smith should have known that, in the face of indecisive trade partners, keeping Santana for a year and taking the picks ("the TR method") wouldn't be the end of the world.

Last 9 seasons? Not sure if his age 25-27 seasons (particularly the good defense components) are particularly relevant now, entering his age 34 season. He's 3 for his last 6 in terms of 3+ fWAR, and only 2 for his last 6 in bWAR. According to Rbat at B-Ref, Rios has only twice been an above average hitter in the past 6 seasons. And both B-Ref and Fangraphs have him as a slightly below-average defensive RF the past 2 seasons (even if "slightly below average" is an upgrade for the Twins OF defense ). By comparison, Masterson only has 5 seasons as a full-time starter, so only two 3+ WAR seasons isn't that much different than Rios' recent record. (And, of course, Masterson is 4 years younger.) Not that the debate should be Masterson vs. Rios. Since 2009, when Rasmus joined the league, he has beaten Rios in WAR roughly 13 to 9 (despite Rasmus playing CF the entire time, and Rios playing in more games). Also, looking ahead, in the event of a bounceback 2015 season and lack of a deadline flip, who would be worth a qualifying offer for 2016? Masterson and Rasmus, almost certainly. Rios? Probably not.

What kids? He's already giving another chance to Hicks in this scenario, and there are no realistic OF "kids" ready to guarantee an opening day job right now (Hicks doesn't even deserve it, really). He's also got Meyer in the rotation, with May in the pen presumably as the 6th starter (unless he becomes a dominant relief weapon). Again, there are no other "kid" pitchers ready.

Anytime an OPS can be swung by 80 points in one game, you're probably dealing with a too-small sample! Although I agree it was encouraging for Rosario. With a good spring, I could see him opening in AAA despite his 2014 regular season performances.

I agree with this. But, the context of this discussion seems to be, do you acquire a MLB OF for 2015, or do you let Rosario compete for a job along with the scraps leftover from our 2014 outfield? You don't have to expect the worst case from Rosario to see how the latter option is far riskier. Heck, with Santana apparently heading back to SS, we have TWO openings in the OF. We could acquire a veteran for one spot and there would still be plenty of room for Rosario to force himself into the lineup.

Not quite true -- Santana played the first month of 2014 in AAA before his recall.

We're already rolling the dice on a few other pitchers, including some youth (May/Meyer). Adding Masterson doesn't guarantee anything, but it gives us an extra dice roll.

Minor league counting stats, particularly split by league thus eliminating guys promoted midseason, are not necessarily great indicators of MLB success. Walker is still a prospect, but the above is more trivia than anything else.

Who would be the four Twins OF prospects ahead of Moya? Buxton I know, but I think Moya is pretty much in the next tier with the other Twins minor league OF. For all of his flaws, keep in mind that most Twins prospects below Buxton/Sano have plenty of flaws too. Also, Moya has already dominated a AA pitcher's league and even got a cup of coffee in MLB, and he's the same age as Walker and Rosario, and only a year older than Kepler. He's also beating Kepler/Rosario by quite a bit in AFL OPS this fall (and for all his lack of discipline, he has more walks in that league than Rosario). Also, Moya is only the Tigers top prospect (by BA, at least) because they just graduated a BA top 25 guy younger than most of the above (Castellanos) and traded another BA Top 100 guy (Devon Travis). I won't disagree that their system is weak, but then again, I don't think they've had a very good farm system in quite a while. I don't think farm system rankings have a terribly high correlation with MLB wins.

I hadn't been following the AFL, so I just looked up the stats. Rosario leads the AFL in AVG and SB, but his OPS ranks only 24th out of 64 batters, thanks to very few walks and XBH. Without regards to park factors, that's about a 107 OPS+. His OBP ranks 29th, his SLG 24th, and even his K% only ranks 26th. And while the AFL features some top prospects, remember a lot of these guys are much more modest prospects like Kepler or Jason Adam. Heck, even some of the top prospects in this league are pretty raw, like Raul Mondesi Jr (defensive-minded 19 year old SS prospect who just OPS'd .610 in high-A ball). Rosario's walk rate appears to be second to last in the league, ahead of only the aforementioned Mondesi. His isolated power ranks 47th, actually behind Mondesi. Solid AFL performances can be encouraging, but an AFL performance would have to be pretty extraordinary to affect a team's offseason decision-making. If Rosario wants to force his way onto the roster next spring, great, but Rosario shouldn't be a factor in our pursuit of a FA outfielder. (Not to pick on you, I think you agree, just a general statement. )

Some batters can improve after that number of PAs, yes. But if a team gives every guy that many MLB PAs, no matter how bad they look (even in AAA in the case of Hicks) before they make a final judgement on them... well, you wind up looking a lot like the 2011-2014 Twins. Also, Jordan Schafer is 28 years old. Hunter, Gomez, and Cuddyer were largely finished products as hitters by age 25-26 (Cuddy was actually a league-average hitter from the get-go at age 23). And I don't think any of them ever looked as thoroughly lost (from an AVG/SLG perspective) as Hicks has looked the past two seasons.

Never mind Hicks - if Schafer was actually capable of hitting righthanders to the tune of .326 AVG, .390 OBP over any significant sample, we wouldn't have an outfield problem. (He also wouldn't have been on waivers in August, of course.)

The Twins were mildly aggressive (is that a thing? ) when they acquired Meyer, slotting him into AA. He injured his shoulder on June 1st that year, which knocked him out over 2 months and pretty much nixed his chance at a midseason or late season promotion. True, they handled him with kid gloves in 2014, including passing him up for promotions which many of us disagreed with, but it does seem to be health-related. As a poster upthread mentioned, Perkins, Baker, Slowey, Garza, Gibson, Hendriks, and now Berrios have all been moved quickly through the system. (Lohse, Radke, and Milton are a few older names that moved quickly. Adam Johnson too.) The Twins problem has been lack of such prospects, or the prospects busting. Maybe we're more conservative with international guys rather than draft guys, but in the Terry Ryan era, we don't even have a international signing equivalent of Yordano Ventura to compare against, really.

I get the situational factors around Meyer, but I don't think this phrasing is going to win many arguments.

Generally agree, but you probably want to leave Blackburn off this list -- it was over 6 years between his draft and his debut at age 25 and a half.

Interestingly, the thing that may prevent us from landing a high-upside FA pitcher -- lack of capable outfielders -- may be the thing that helps us land Rasmus. Minnesota has to look like the closest thing to a guaranteed CF job in 2015, which might be important to him after losing such a job in Toronto. Might it even be enough to land him on a reasonable 3 year deal, like Hughes last offseason? Honestly, looking at our outfielders, there's probably a starting job for the taking over the next 3 years.