BrianTrottier

I thought he was in line for a Cy Young award.

This type of prognostication at this point in time is a sure sign that it's time for baseball season to begin.

I recall Joe Mauer getting skewered around these parts for his focus on flexibility training in his offseason regimen.

That would be interesting for someone to look up, but you'd run into issues of small sample sizes. I don't think you'd be able to draw any conclusions either way..

Probably no sense to it. It's just how it struck me in the moment..Maybe from other comments I've read here and elsewhere that were along the lines of "X player has said it's a bigger advantage to know the pitch beforehand than to take PEDs, so it's clearly a bigger advantage" which led me down a line of thought how some players have placed their personal experience over analytics in determining how the game should be played. Not that his thought literally signals a disdain for analytics, but maybe that it comes from a similar place. It was probably an ill thought out comment on my part.

That's interesting. Do you recall which player it was? That type of statement strikes me as possibly coming from the same place as "I played the game, so take your spin rates and launch angles and shove it." Does he really know that's the case, based only on his lived experience? Does he understand the effects different types of PEDs have on the human body? Without that understanding isn't he just prognosticating like the rest of us? Maybe he does, and I'm certainly no expert. In any case, I was just doing some looking on baseball reference for 2017 home/road splits for Altuve, Bregman, and Marwin (he put up 4+ wins that year and is on our team now, so why not?), plus Houston as a whole, and here are some home/road splits from 2017 listed in order of GP/AB/BA/OBP/SLG/OPS. It's not like this is a systematic analysis, but I think it's helpful to frame the problem. Altuve home: 78 gp / 296 ab /.311 ba /.371 obp /.463 slg / .834 ops Altuve away: 75/294/.381/.449/.633/1.081 Altuve's numbers were quite a bit better on the road that year than at home. Bregman home: 76/266/.278/.343/.444/.787 Bregman away: 79/290/.290/.360/.503/.863 Bregman's numbers were also better on the road than at home. Marwin home: 70/234/.282/.339/.543/.881 Marwin away: 64/221/.326/.416/.516/.932 Marwin also performed better on the road that season. Collectively, the 2017 Astros as a team produced the following splits: home: .279 avg/ .340 obp/ .472 slg/ .812 ops away: .284 avg/ .351 obp/.483 slg/ .834 ops Numbers weren't dramatically different, but their road performance had a slight edge over this home games. I'm sure there were plenty of key moments where the cheating resulted in a favorable outcome for Houston than if it wasn't deployed, so don't take this as me saying that it had no impact. All I'm saying is that maybe it isn't so clear that this type of cheating is magnitudes more advantageous than PEDs. It's really hard to say what the exact impact of either was on terms of actual outcomes. We don't have counterfactuals to observe, so we have to rely on our own wits when thinking about what would've happened had the sign stealing (or PED use) not occurred. But I feel pretty comfortable saying that Brady Anderson would not have hit 50 home runs (24% of his career total) in 1996 if he was not juicing. I don't feel comfortable saying that the Astros wouldn't be WS champs in 2017 if they had not stolen signs. It's probably less likely that they would have been, but who knows? But the argument in the original article is that this scandal is the most impactful on the game in history. I think that it's too early to say that this has had a larger impact on the game than PEDs, though. Maybe this scandal will lead to a lot of fans turning away, which we know that the PED scandal did. We know guys like Ken Caminiti have died from their PED use. We know records were broken, and congressional hearings were held. People still get busted for PEDs, and the issue reaches into all levels of professional baseball. Can the same be said for using video feeds to steal signs (that's an honest question)? Finally, I am adamant that the codified racism of early MLB is the largest scandal in the history of the game. Neither PED use nor using technology for sign stealing touches that, IMO.

An argument against signing Donaldson is that he might have to be a DH at some point? Much of your argument is predicated on his potential defensive decline, so wouldn't his being able to DH be a reason for signing him?

I'll preface my comment by saying I'm glad MLB came down hard on the Astros. ETA: I also believe this is very bad for the game, and has a much more negative impact than gambling. Anyway, I can't see how this is more "impactful" than the steroids epidemic. That was/is magnitudes more widespread (from what we can tell given the available evidence), it's still ongoing, and it provided a benefit to juicers for all 162 games, not just the home games where they had a video feed in their own dugout. Some of the most historic seasons in baseball history have been written on steroid use. Using tech to steal signs still requires the players to execute, as does steroid use, but the physical/chemical makeup of the players themselves is not altered by the bang of a garbage can. Players have not died as a result of stealing signs, which cannot be said of PED use. I can't see how someone can argue that this is worse for the game than steroids were. Also ETA: I don't see how you can argue that this is a more impactful scandal for the game than the racial segregation MLB was founded on. That excluded generations of would-be MLB greats, and exacerbated fissures in our society that we still have not overcome.

Good input!

Probably because he's a good, but not elite relief arm, which is the type of guy who doesn't get many long term offers thrown his way. But he's good enough to stick around the league for a long time.

Front Office math boys think there pulling one over on us. Is he even a bullpen ace? /s

A person interested in having a good faith discussion rather than shutting down the conversation by egregiously mischaracterizing what someone else said would understand that my bringing up the Logan Morrison signing was an example of this FO attempting to build a competitive team with by identifying guys with recent success that could fill holes on the roster without eating up a ton of payroll. As with all FA signings, some work out and some don't. Remember, Logan Morrison was coming off nearly a 40 HR season with Tampa when he was non-tendered, just as Cron was when the Twins signed him last year. Morrison didn't work out, Cron largely did. You have to be intentionally misreading my post to glean anything close to me saying the Morrison signing was an example of a "sea change" this FO has brought about. You also conveniently ignore my other examples that I cited... Anyway, if you need examples (again), here are a few ways the current FO has shown that's different than the previous: -They actually fired a manager who was in the middle of his contract because of his failure to win and replaced him with the youngest manager in MLB, based largely on his forward-thinking approach to player management and the emphasis he places on building a productive team culture. -They have won 100 games in a season. -They hired their pitching coach from the college ranks (a first in MLB history, I believe) in large part because of his expertise in using biomechanic data to help pitchers adjust their mechanics to add velocity, and therefore strikeouts. This is also an example that the current FO holds a fundamentally different approach to pitching than the pitch-to-contact philosophy that bogged us down during the Terry Ryan years. -This FO actually embraces analytics to help their decision-making. For example: https://www.minnpost.com/sports/2019/03/can-the-twins-big-data-their-way-into-a-decent-pitching-staff/ -They sign young players with upside to team friendly extensions (Polanco, Kepler), rather than doling them out to aging vets based on results that were clearly fluky even to somewhat casual fans (i.e. Hughes, Pelfrey)--granted, Mauer was a great exception to that trend. -Other teams now poach our coaches. I'm sure there are some things I missed, but here you go.

Would you care to share your research?

The point isn't that people were excited. The point is that they made a series of good signings to position themselves for another playoff run. The season went south for a variety of reasons, and I think it's an unfair assessment of the FO to pin the disappointment entirely on their FA signings that year. The real issue was the existing core that didn't produce as needed, a manager who was ill suited for running a modern MLB team, as well as some FA signings that didn't turn out as hoped.

At the time, Addison Reed seemed like a very good signing. He was the "high impact" type of bullpen arm people here (myself included) clamor for. Zach Duke was also a good signing--he pitched to a solid 2.68 FIP and 9.4 k/9 across 45 appearances as a lefty specialist, and was flipped for Chase DeJong, which, bleh. Fernando Rodney more than held his own with the Twins, despite a lot of people panning the move at the time. He managed to deliver a 3.8 FIP and 10.4 k/9 in 46 appearances, and was then flipped for Dakota Chalmers who probably won't pan out, but was a decent return at the time. Logan Morrison was coming off a 38 HR season with Tampa, and just as easily could have provided us with the value that Cron did in 2019. It was one of those moves that could have paid off greatly, but wound up going the way we didn't want it to, which I think any reasonable person knew was a real possibility. Point being, the sardonic trashing of that free agent class is misguided. I recall a lot of people on this site feeling pretty excited going into 2018 with some of the guys the FO acquired. ETA: Not to mention the firing of Molitor, and hiring of guys like Baldy, Wes Johnson, Derek Shelton, etc. and the investments they've made in player development, which I think are starting to show, as evidenced by the general early successes of Smeltzer, Dobnak, and Graterol,the reformations of Tyler Duffey and Trevor May, and the steps forward taken by Polanco, Kepler, Sano, and Buxton when he's on the field.