Doomtints

The fear about De Leon "busting" is interesting. He can be a normal, run-of-the-mill rookie starting pitcher -- meltdowns and all -- and still be the team's #2 guy. This staff has 1 pitcher they can count on. Even a very green De Leon improves this team. If you are 4 starting pitchers down and scoffing at what you want to call a #3 starter coming in to help fill the gap, you're a weirdo.

I was upset about nothing. I was responding to people talking about, "Well shucks, they couldn't do anything this offseason because they are still getting their feet wet. They simply have no knowledge about baseball players." As for knowing the value of their internal players, you probably noticed Yohan Pino was recently re-signed. Let that simmer a bit, because that decision certainly did not come from any new blood in the organization.

Yeah I dunno man. I think they probably should back away from the microphone after using the "new sunglesses" thing last year. That one simply can't be topped. Gladden pointed out on the air that Mauer has a Nike deal, and he appeared to be wearing Nike sunglasses all the time. Product placement at its finest. In this vein, it would be something like, "I'm trying compression leggings to help with my calf soreness this year." Nike makes those. Of course, Mauer also has deals with Rawlings and Steiner Sports so maybe he will throw them some bones next year. Rawlings makes chin straps that he could try, though it seems like a lost opportunity not having used that one on Nunez.

The scouting reports that claim he would be good at 2B but not at SS are a couple of years old now too. At some point you have to let the kid play and forget about the pundits. We'll see what he's worth at SS very shortly, the Twins gave themselves no other option for Polanco whether he can play there or not.

The Twins should probably roll with that they have. Any of the free agents mentioned here would only sign with the Twins because sitting around their houses by themselves might seem depressing and the only option available to them is standing around in a depressing clubhouse and getting paid.

Maybe. But they won't get a guy who is so close to being ready.

No one said otherwise.

You can only do those things with players you have direct access to. You can't do this for players in other team systems. This would have had no impact on trade decisions. This also isn't metrics, this is part of a training regimen.

Ah, the Terry Ryan method. Any choice may fail so just make no choices.

... All teams have access to the same data. There is no team in baseball that sends statisticians to every game to measure raw data a different way.

Again, looking at their job titles, they should know the algorithms. They don't have to steal anything. We're not talking about a low or mid level employee switching organizations. We are talking about the guys who should have been dictating the algorithms in the first place.

Taking an algorithm to measure freely available baseball data is NOT theft. Taking internal data, internal scouting reports, and internal notes on players COULD be theft (but might not be if they were yours to begin with or were otherwise available or common knowledge). The Supreme Court weighed in on this in 2010. Algorithms are not patentable in and of themselves and are thus not intellectual property. Now, someone could invent a "baseball analytics machine" and the algorithms contained therein to make the machine work would be patentable. Did the Rangers or Indians have such a machine? If Falvey/Levine have not met with their analytics staff and said "here is what I want to see" they're not suitable for their jobs. The Twins have the data.

Are you sure that matters? Falvey and Levine, being in the positions that they are in, already know what numbers they want to look at. They likely have a spreadsheet in their hands with their value of every player in the league, and had it before they started with the Twins. They can teach their analytics department their methodology later on, if they have not taught it to them already. "Here, use this set of algorithms" is a five minute conversation that would take a data guy less than a day to implement.

I'm strongly implying that they DID.

Yep. What's the point in an analytics department if they can't instantly put a value on their assets. There is no feet wetting going on here.

Sorry to harsh any Tuesday morning buzzes, but here's a quick reality check. Twins GMs since 2008, ranked: 1) Rob Antony 2) Bill Smith 3) Thad Levine* 4) Terry Ryan *Still has time to improve (or to get worse). And even this is generous. Levine and Ryan are probably tied.

Couple of things. The Twins would have kept Viola if they had any way of making Viola happy. Viola demanded a trade and proceeded to become a cancer in the clubhouse until he was traded. Many Twins players spoke about this after it happened. They liked Viola but they were all happy to see him go because of how he acted at the end. Viola was not traded because he was a top asset and the teams had other, glaring holes that they needed to fill to avoid losing 100 games. As for "Then that's baseball..." Well, the Twins had a chance to out-maneuver a "that's the breaks, man, what can you do?" scenario and failed. Now their backs will be to the wall and they will be bargaining from a poor position IF Dozier does well and IF there are any suitors. You know, the familiar Twins story we were hoping left with Ryan.

They only think the others are "better" due to timing. De Leon should be going into the bigs now. The Dodgers are smart to not block him particularly when they have other good players who will be ready at more appropriate times.

Of course. The Dodgers president used to be the Rays GM. The Dodgers knew they could get this deal done whenever they wanted, and they were even willing to overpay to keep the friendship going. This shows the Dodgers are very intelligent. The new Twins front office is making the types of mistakes Ryan made in the 90s. In the end, Ryan only seemed to be able to trade with a handful of teams and over the past few years he got burned each time. This indicates the other teams were not dealing with Ryan in good faith. This new front office seems very adept at burning bridges as well.

Andrew Friedman (Dodgers president) has close ties to Forsythe and has traded for him in the past back when he was GM of the Rays. This deal says nothing about what was on the table for Dozier. Friedman has close ties to the Rays. This was a "buddy" deal so the Dodgers could move on. They no doubt realize they overpaid for him, Friedman went for the solid player that he is familiar with. Considering he was willing to take the worse end of a deal to get a 2B, this indicates that it was the Twins who were being unreasonable. Please don't be offended when the "I told you so's" get brought up regarding De Leon in the future.

Vielma only makes the Twins if the Twins are still broken in two years and still can't figure out how to field a major league level team. Don't wish for this.

Can he pitch?

Golf clap, Twins.

Way too much doom & gloom in this thread for a young prospect's defense.

Or "Troy Williamson caught 10,000 balls during the offseason."