diehardtwinsfan

excellent article. In my college marketing class in the late 90s (in Cleveland, OH, btw), I had to watch a case study video on the Minnesota Twins and their marketing. In this particular case, it emphasized how they were successful in bringing fans to the Metrodome to watch some really bad baseball. As well, I got my first taste on some of the economics of baseball. I know we love TF, but I wonder if things like that tend to make people soft, or just lazy. They now have a beautiful park that can attract fans, and so it makes their jobs a bit easier... and when the job gets easier, people sometimes get sloppy. Bottom line, the marketing group is pretty clearly out of touch. Oh, and I don't think your Civic is a good comparrison. I have a 98 Civic that I still drive. It will it 300k miles later this year and I got 45 mpg on my last fill up. I suppose if you are talking race cars that it might be a good comparrison if it's opponents are a BMW, Porsche, Charger, and a 1970s mustang, but that car is reliable and does what it needs to do. Not sure I'd disrespect my Civic and compare it to what has been on the field the last 4 years.

If that's the point that was being made, then my point for saying what I said was completed missed. Plouffe and Suzukie were among the guys that were listed as someone not to be trusted. Both have been solidly above average for their positions this year. They aren't stars, I get that. They are complementary pieces, even to a contending team... I'd argue that pieces like that are a necessity on a contending team. The potential stars really aren't here yet, and that I think is the biggest problem the Twins face... along with pitching.

I think the issue I have is that I'd rather make the big expenditures when the team is a contender needing to fill a hole than to do it now when they aren't a contender. I don't see much positive from this as whatever FA they sign is probably going to be worse (potentially much worse) in 2017/18 and the presence of a contract will essentially hamstring the team from doing anything at that point. I'm not necessarily against it, but I think the idea of going out and getting that ace right now is pretty risky since that ace won't likely be that guy anymore when the team will most need it.

Both played their positions better than average. You won't find much in terms of replacements. If you are expecting stars in every spot, I think your expectations need to be reset. The problem this year was pitching, Mauer's poor season, pitching, lack of progression from Arcia, pitching, and really really really bad OF defense. Unfortunately, as I see it, there isn't much that can be done about it. Not much will happen in CF with Buxton coming up. LF could certainly be filled, but I think you wait on that until some of the other pieces establish themselves. You can non-tender milone (I doubt they do, nor should they), and the Twins might be convinced to give up on the last year of Pelfrey, but Nolasco isn't going anywhere. Hughes and Gibson did well. May will get his shot and will likely be much better, as will Meyer at some point.

Those K rates are sick. Reed had the lowest at 16k/13IP. Says a lot for the future pen. Kind of hard to give up late leads when no one puts the ball in play.

Plouffe and Suzuki werent' the problems this year.

I wonder what the going rate is for major league ready pitching that slots more into the 3-5 range. The Twins are going to have a few guys to trade if guys like Duffey, Wheeler, and Rodgers continue to perform. There wont' be room for all of them, and they all will (hopefully) be eclipsed by far better options in Meyer, May, Berrios in the short term and Stewart, Thorpe, Hu, and Gonsalves coming up behind them.

Jokin, You are changing the subject again. I don't think anyone here would disagree that the Twins drafting philosophy needed changing, and I think we'd both agree that it has changed over the last couple of years... That said... Call me crazy if you must, but I don't see how the fact that Washington brought up their guys younger is a cause for their current fwar values. Correlation does not equal causation. Strasburg, as an example, was a very highly thought of prospect (drafted 1st overall in 2010) and absolutely dominated the minors in ways Meyer never did. To compare how Washington handled him in comparrison to Meyer comes across as disengenious at best. These are two individuals who produced different results with different expectations. What I find most amusing about it is that Meyer came over from Washington, and the Twins simply continued with the progression that he made during his tenure there. They didn't force him to repeat high A, they put him in AA where Washington would have put him. He started out well and got hurt and missed most of last year. The Twins promoted him in spite of that, at which point he's struggled for most of the season, as well as having to deal with a workload designed to strengthen him long term. I can see the case for him being called up at one point this season (which we obviously disagree on), but at the same time, he came over from Washington, who you are saying we should mimic, and they didn't handle him in this way. It really is quite possible that the front office knows what they are doing here.

Using age as a reason to promote is not a good idea in my opinion. For one, it ignores the reality that Meyer was hurt for a good chunk of last season, and from what I understand, has also had other injury issues in his career. Second, it completely sets aside the concept of readiness. I get that very few people are truly ready in that the can come in and contribute, but if there's still quite a bit of learning that can be done in the minors, I'd think it's in the player and the team's best interest to allow that learning to be done in lower leverage/development type situations. I unerstand that he can be flat out dominant at times. We also saw this year that he's got some serious control issues that plague him at times. He didn't improve on that this season as he stepped up, and I fail to see how a promotion will somehow cure that and not exacerbate an already concerning issue. Third, in this case, it ignores very real workload situations. Berrios successfully pitched 100 innings last year and 140 this year (not counting winter/fall ball, as I don't know what those totals were). Meyer has pitched less. He's an older prospect but is on roughly the same workload restrictions as Berrios, with next year looking at approximately 160-180 innings (assuming of course his inability to get loose isn't something bigger). That sais, I still see Meyer as the better prospect, though not my much as that gap has closed. JO has done nothing but prove doubters wrong at every step, and I'm hoping that trend continues into 2015. If it does, he may find himself in Minnesota by the summer.

I'd recommend some caution with your use of absolutes. There are plenty of examples of players who peak in the 27-32 range instead of the 25-27 range, and I'm sure there are many factors to this. The big one I see is that physical peak doesn't necessarily correspond to a players development. While all the necessary physical capacity aspects of the game (strength, coordination, dexterity, etc) have peaked, many of the components that require a mental approach or additional physical tuning may not have. I don't see age as a reason to promote or deny a person. You bring them up when it looks like they can have success at this level.

I guess I'm more with Seth here. Polanco didn't exactly dominate AA. Having him up wouldn't be bad, but at the same time, he's got to play. It isn't as though baseball adds more positions after September. There's still only 9 positions and a DH to fill, and the infield is already croweded. He'd end up accumulating service time and maybe getting a handful of at bats. Could he learn from it? Maybe. I'm not sure how much.

Not quite sure if he's ahead of Meyer yet, but he's closed the gap. I don't see him heading north with the Twins next year though.

I'd argue that this it true of any decent offense. Runs score in bunches. That's not new. The goal is to score a lot of them, and that's something that the current offense does very well. I'd add that it is even more impressive when you consider the fact that they were a pretty poor offensive team earlier in the year.

Not to discount Vavra, but how does the ranking get determined? I'd have put Minier, Walker, and Garver in some order for 1-3. Vavra did well, but not as well as those 3, and he's quite a bit older for his league.

I think your oldest son is being a bit unfair to Escobar and Plouffe. Plouffe hasn't been a star, but he's been a top 10 3B this season, so solidy above average. Escobar has been above average both defensively and offensively. Santana looks like he could be better in boht categories (though playing CF isn't helping him), but I'd caution on using the term 'utility' to describe Escobar. He gets that term b/c he plays several positions, but he's played them very well. This team's problem is mostly pitching related, and unless Nolasco gets better, Hughes keeps doing what he's doing, and we see improvement from May and Gibson, the problem will continue to be pitching.

This is baseball not football. You cannot just cut a guy if he's not perforing. They are under contract, and baseball contracts are guaranteed. You also won't typically find much in terms of impact pitching out of the FA market. Likewise, the younger players take a lot more time to adjust and become good players. Very few walk in and suddenly become stars. That, to me sums up the big problems b/c Nolasco and Pelfrey in particular aren't going anywhere. Gibson and May will need time to improve. Meyer and Berrios aren't ready. The offense has been pretty good since the young guys have been brought in, and while it can always be tweaked (particularly in CF until Buxton is ready and a long term decision about LF), I think Nick's point is generally valid. What I find amusing about this is that the Twins did exactly what we asked them to do last offseason and essentially blow up the roster. They went out and got 3 pitchers. 2 of the 3 can only be described as failures (which I might add is not terribly unusual in the FA market) and one of those two has 3 years left on his contract. Now we ask that they go do this again. The problem is that there's about 40 million left on the books, and we cannot just recoup it by cutting the guy. I'm not a fan of the Pohlads by any means, but if we want a case study on why that doesn't work, we should go look at how the Cubs have been run for the past 50 or so years. It rarely works.

Vargas, Arcia, and Sano are going to make a very nice core over the next few years. I'm pretty excited about that as all of them. Combine them with Buxton, Santana, Mauer, and Dozier, and you have a pretty nice 1-7.

I would think they have to be tracking this someway. 60ish innings isn't that much. These guys have obviously had some sort of workload in EST. I'm guessing it's a non-issue. It isn't like the big league club is going to say 'don't play them'.

I have no problems going all in. You don't do it on a pair of 3s though. As others have said, you do it when you know where your weaknesses are, and you don't have that many. The likelihood of Scherzer finishing out his next deal well are pretty low... He'd provide his best years when the team isn't competitive, and his worst when they are.

It's also the downside. If they sign that contract now, you might be wishing 4 years from now that it was never signed.

I think the issue right now, is that the Twins need to figure out which core guys are core guys and which ones aren't. At the beginning of the season, if someone had said that we will be set at SS for the forseable future, that person would have been laughed out of here. Now, there's a lot more optimism given how Santana and Escobar have performed this season... enough that people won't be clamoring for a SS this offseason. The Twins have added some new guys, and some of them are going to take some lumps. Some will be good. Some will fail. It's still too early to determine who is going to succeed or fail. I think you let the kids do their thing... If they want an LF, I'm fine with that, but I'd look more to the young, cost controlled, high upside guys... but those are only available by trade and won't come cheaply, as they won't be asking for a Rosario, Duffey, Walker combo.

I suspect this isn't your conclusion goulik (I'm addressing conclusions being made off of the stats you posted here), but I think the idea that comparing a guy's year 1 stats to a year 2 stat and then saying "most guys don't improve after their rookie season" isn't a good way to look at things. I suspect improvement is a fuction of age and skill, and the guys who have been in the majors for a decent amount of time have careers that typically resemble a bell curve of sorts. I have a tough time believing that a guy will do what he does as rookie and then never get better. There may be some truth to that with a 28 year old guy breaking into the league for the first time, but even that is questoinable. Guys like Dozier show that it takes time. It's pretty easy to point to examples like Mauer, Morneau, Gomez, etc. who broke in much younger and got better as they aged. In a nut shell, context is a big deal and managing a team based on broad generalizations such as this one is not a good way to manage a team.

Me thinks Walker is turning into a controversial prospect. To be clear, I like him. He has star potential, which isn't bad for a 3rd rounder. He's also high risk. The big issue is contact. He dosn't make nearly enough of it. He's a great mistake pitch hitter, but those number of mistakes drops significantly as he moves up the chain. Letting him work on that in an area where he's not overmatched is wise. the A+ to AA is one of the hardest transitions to make, and while he's improved a bit in A+ over the season, he's still got some contact issues, and I really don't think these are minor issues at this point, and this isn't just a concern of the Twins, pro scouts are saying the exact same thing. I think the Twins know what they are doing here. As for your prediction, I'll drink to that. I don't think that smaller ballparks are going to have too much of an affect on K rate and contact rate. They might help a few foul balls that turn into outs stay out of play, but beyond that, if he drops is K rate 6% as lightfoot predicts, he's going to rocket up a lot of lists.

The problem is that these guys won't get you much. They could all end up being very nice pieces too, but right now, you won't find a difference making piece for one of these guys, which is why I agree with you that I'm not in favor of trading these guys right now

Brock is saying that trading prospects will likely delay the time when this team will be cometitive again, not improve it. One guy isn't going to make this team a contender, and by trading away prospects, you trade away the guys who will likely help aid contention down the road, thus delaying it. I'd add that while you would settle for Sheilds, that doesn't mean that there's going to be guys better than that available. You won't build a contender by a few FA signings and trading for some prospects. It doesn't happen very often.