Doomtints

If my last name were Pohlad, my directive to the front office would be to budget to spend enough to be ranked #15 -- the middle -- in team spending every year. In the years where the Twins were close to a championship (not the playoffs), I would I would authorize more, 10th-12th depending on what made sense. This franchise is a disgrace in years when it spends less than the average. There is no reason for it. The franchise makes more money than it lets on. We know the Pohlads were unhappy with the inheritance tax they had to pay on the Twins and wanted to recover it, but those days are long gone. The franchise even managed to convince many fans that spending in the bottom third is the way to win, and that spending more would mean immediate bankruptcy and failure. Poppycock.

I'm not as high on Darvish as everyone else. He is a guy I can see getting injured and sitting out much of his contract. I won't be upset if the Twins land him, but I caution everybody to temper their enthusiasm.

Just curious, how long do you think WAA has been around? As Adam Darowski of SABR (an early proponent of WAA) wrote, "62% of WAR is just showing up." WAA separates the wheat from the chaff. Look, if you want to compare major league veteran players career AAA players, go for it. At some point you gotta pump the brakes and start comparing veteran players to other MLB players. WAR is a tool that teams need to use to build rosters, but so is WAA, and yes if you never look at WAA you are missing too much of the story to make a good decision.

You misunderstand then. It's not about .500 teams. WAR -> Comparison to top level AAA players. "Replacement level." WAA -> Comparison to major league players. "Good players." Since most teams have around half of their players with a flatline or negative WAA, the actual metric for a .500 team is somewhere between the WAR and WAA. Thus, a .500 team should have a negative WAA, albeit small. To test this let's look at the data. There were no .500 teams this year. Here are the closest: Royals (80-82) -6.5. Rays (80-82) 1.9 Angels (80-82) -2.5 Average: -3.63 Seems legit, but the Rays under-performed and the Royals over-performed (but this sample size is far too small). The Twins WAA was 0.4 (This tells us what we already know -- the Twins were a hair better than the competition). The Astros? 17.8. But this isn't even the point. The point is comparing players. If you are looking at a 1.3 WAR dude and thinking happy thoughts but WAA at the position was 2.4 in that year, well, you're actually getting a bad player. I understand there's a ton of information about WAR and none at all about WAA, so many of us are going to be unable to think about WAA at all, though. I completely get the "does not compute" responses.

I have strong biases against FIP. I have never liked it. But that's a big rabbit hole of a discussion that we have already had around here a few times. I just have to accept that FIP is valuable to some people and work with it.

Pineda signing: "Love it. What's the big deal? 1 year deals never hurt. Even if he is terrible this is OK." ($10M / 2 yrs / currently injured) Rodney signing: "Hate it. Terrible deal. We need young guys, not vets." ($4.5M / 1 yr; $6M if he pitches well / currently healthy)

If he is worse than the competition he is a negative. #4 and #5 starters are negatives on most teams, but teams can only afford so many #1s and #2s. If your first move in free agency is to add a #4/#5, you're doing something wrong. This is the same trap Ryan kept falling into.

If Rodney's arm hasn't fallen off yet, it never will. And this is cheap. A dependable closer makes a huge difference. Rodney isn't "lights out" (he never has been) but he is dependable when it matters. Much better than a Ron Davis type who is the opposite. Lots to like here.

Disapprove? No. Agree? No. Understand? I think so, I've seen these hurrahs every time Ryan did something bizarre too. It's fans being literally fanatical. It's OK to be critical. I would call it essential. As I said, for this to be the first move makes no sense. If this had been the last move, sure, why not. Seems to me the Twins front office still overvalues pitchers who dominate them, regardless of how the pitchers pitch against everybody else.

*shrug* I honestly couldn't say if any of these guys will eventually provide value. The Twins need more than just arms, they need dependable arms / good arms. Just having pitchers with a pulse hasn't worked out for them. I couldn't say if losing Burdi will ultimately matter....

The sheer size of SABR can be daunting, and as John said, advanced metrics are but a small part of it (and the people involved with stats are probably the least accessible, btw, so don't join just for that ... reach out to people on Fangraphs if your only concern is nerding out on stats). If you love baseball, and love meeting others who love baseball, and especially if you have an esoteric interest in some small part of baseball that no one else seems to have ... join SABR and you will find people to converse with. The meetings are great and the publications are great. A membership gets you access to the publications for free, and these are real books, such as: https://www.amazon.com/Pennant-Twin-Cities-Minnesota-Digital-ebook/dp/B0163TRTHS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513201641&sr=8-1&keywords=minnesota+twins+1965

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/nolasri01.shtml Like Nolasco, Pineda has some fangraphs pundits scratching their heads. "His FIP looks nice, why does he suck? We just can't figure it out." https://www.google.com/search?q=michael+pineda+fangraphs Sometimes (always?) you have to use actual metrics instead of algorithms.

Except I'm talking about WAA and not WAR. WAR = the baseline, you never want a player below 0 WAR, but a player with positive WAR can still be a below average player. WAA = the average player. Good players have a positive WAA. ****ty players can still have a positive WAR but will have a negative WAA. Here is his WAA by year: 2011 - 0.6 2012-2013 - Minors 2014 - 2.0 (in a small sample size) 2015 - 0.2 2016 - -0.4 2017 - -0.1 From 2015 on, he has a WAA of -0.3. That's a below average (minus) player. "Replacement level" means nothing, you want to field a team that is better than your competition (WAA) -- not better than the minors (WAR).

Of course. You are probably familiar with ERA+, OPS+, wRC+, etc., where values under 100 are below average (negative value) players. For a team to make the playoffs, teams want as many above average players as possible. Replacement value (WAR) is worthless. Look at WAA instead.

We have to start doing deeper demographics on white voters. White Christian voters (which yes is most of them) v. all other whites. Until we do that, we're not going to truly see where the problem is. It's not just being white.

Social media has made the more aggressive among us believe there are no consequences for lying, and particularly no consequences for attacking people with lies. As participants in an online forum, we have all seen this for years. This has started to become dangerous, however.

If you look at his stat sheet, the likelihood of a breakout year is low. He's a #3/#4 guy at best. If he pitches well in 2019, no one is going to be paying big money for a guy with one good year by age 31/32. Best case (for him) is he has a #3-level year and the Twins extend him, or he becomes a good bullpen arm and the Twins extend him. Worst case is he turns into Scott Baker and the recovery from TJ is long. He may never actually play for the Twins before his contract runs out. This has all the red flags of the bad signings Ryan made post 2011. Let's hope this one works out. We're again talking about the $ involved, which doesn't matter. This team isn't going bankrupt and they have yet to make an investment in a top or even mid-level player that doesn't have an asterisk. If the Minnesota Twins ever reach a point where they can't pay their bills, then let's talk about $!

He has been a negative value pitcher for the past two years, and past 3 years as a whole, when compared to league average pitchers. Those are the numbers, there's nothing disingenuous there. In fact, it's disingenuous to have a narrative that is the opposite of the numbers, no?

Pineda has a negative WAA since 2014. When the Yankees acquired him, they stashed him in the minors which seems strange. He will be 30 years old before he plays a game for the Twins. I'm betting there were no other suitors for this player who was going to sit out a year. Overall this seems pretty daft as the first move the team makes. I could see this being the last move after the pressing issues are addressed, but not the first.

Bleh. This is a move to help 2019, and as such this signing could have been done two months from now if there were still a need. Let's see something done to help 2018, which would essentially help 2019 too.

*popularity, not tenure.

By then the same people who voted the first time would be voting for the player again. The point is to get a different perspective. Morris *was* considered one of the top pitchers in his era. That means something. It's called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Great Stats.

Thanks mods!

Blockbuster trades seem to be more about $$$, as in one team once to unload. A team gutting its farm system for a couple of short term players seems to be the exception to the rule. It doesn't happen often. A team might give up a prospect it likes, but I don't see many teams having all of their worthy minor league players sent packing. Twins fans seem to be particularly bad at using the Appeal to Extremes fallacy. It's pretty much guaranteed this card will be played in any discussion about acquiring talent or payroll. We hear this so often anyone brings up free agency, you would think there were a snowball's chance in hell this team could go bankrupt. Worrying about cash for this team is something none of us should be doing. Ditto with the horror scenarios thrown around by making trades. When was the last time you remember the Twins being BUYERS for a trade? Even the Nathan trade was the actually the Twins trying to unload somebody else. Maybe we can let them try it just once before we declare doomsday.

BTW, ByungHo dropped the hyphen a couple of years ago. We should follow suit seeing that he's a Twins alum. Let the writers/fans in other markets get it wrong, not us. It's the least we can do. The bigger question, is his 0.1 WAR enough to get him into the Twins HOF? Where do his 12 dingers rank in Twins history?