Catching Conundrum
Gleeman touched on this topic today, but I would like to discuss it further. Why is Gardy so afraid of using both Redmond and Mauer in the lineup at the same time? Why is he so scared of losing his DH? Is having a pitcher hit that much worse than using Tyner or Rondell White? I think it is safe to say that our best bat off the bench was Mike Redmond, so isn’t having him sit on the bench instead of used as the DH a waste and detrimental to the team? His doomsday scenario only played out once last year. In the second game of that double header against the white sox in July. We won. In that game Redmond got hurt in the first inning, so Gardy had to play by NL rules all game. If memory serves we scored about 12 runs that game (after putting up over 20 in the first game), and how many times did we score in double digits all year? Not many. So it seems like we play better when using NL rules because nobody expects the pitcher to produce. He usually stirkes out or can lay down a nice bunt. Where as the White/Tyner types hit into a double play or some other very unproductive out. I think Gardy should face his fear and just put the best lineup he can on the field without worrying about losing his DH for a few innings. It’s a long season, so maybe having to actively manage NL style every once in a while will keep him sharp. I just hate to see the twins lose games because of Gardy’s irrational fear of losing his DH.
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Even more amusingly, in the first game of that double header, Tyner was the DH and went 0-5. The team still managed to score 20 runs. Is Gardy afraid that a pitcher is going to do worse? If he goes 0-6, it means he’s pitching deep into the game and we’ve gone through the order six times — sounds like a blowout to me.
I agree that his fear about this is idiotic (especially when he’s still scared to do it when he has a ridiculous third catcher on the roster), but it shouldn’t be as much of an issue this year. I’d rather have Kubel at DH than Redmond, and I’m hoping that Kubel shows enough this year that he’d be a better option than even Mauer, meaning that Mauer can get ACTUAL days off from time to time.
That is a very good point. I believe Kubel is penciled in as the everyday DH with Monroe as his backup. That will make backup catching Redmond’s only job. Which is fine. If Monroe doesn’t really impress everyone in spring training I would like to see the twins just eat 600K and cut him. Why pay 3+MM for a backup DH and 5th outfielder. Garrett Jones is just as effective to do that, and much cheaper. Gardy does seem to like to have a veteran leader in the clubhouse, but I think redmond can handle that. Morneau seems to be adopting that role more and more everyday as well.
While signing Monroe to that contract was almost certainly a mistake (Wild Bill seems almost as inept at free agency as TR was), I don’t see them cutting him and eating the $600K. First, that would be a complete waste of $600K, whereas the $3M is just a bad contract. The payroll is already low, so it’s not like we need to save money wherever we can.
Also, Monroe’s spot on the roster isn’t holding down some talented youngster. Garrett Jones is left handed; we signed Monroe to hit lefties. Monroe also has a chance to start the season in CF while Gomez/Pridie develop a bit. Jones is a 1B who struggles mightily in the OF.
And having a guy like Monroe available to pinch hit late in games is a whole lot better than being stuck with Tyner and L-Rod as options. Even Jones wouldn’t be that good; I think veterans would be better pinch hitters than young players, since they’ve already gotten plenty of ABs.
I don’t think it was a great signing, but kicking him to the curb at this point may be foolish.
That is true about not having to pinch every penny anymore. It just seems we could have signed Mike Sweeney or some other veteran to fill that role for much cheaper if we had waited a few months. Granted Sweeney can’t play OF, but a bobby keilty or kevin mench type seems like it would have been a safter bet. Or at least cheaper. I guess signing Monroe just haunts me because he is so similar to Rondell White.
I wouldn’t have wanted to bring back Kielty — might be some animosity between him and Cuddyer because one of them has turned into a good player, while the other one has a WS ring.
I think we passed on Sweeney because of his recent injury history; he’s a lot more like White.
Overlooking Emil Brown and Kevin Mench was probably a mistake, since they have better numbers and smaller contracts.
But there’s always the possibility that Monroe is “hungry.” That’s not something that shows up in the stats, but after being unceremoniously dumped by Detroit and having a terrible season, he may have quite a bounce-back year. On one level, he has to prove he’s still a good player. On the other, he’ll want to eat the Tigers for lunch. Both are good for us.
And there are rules against lowering a player’s salary. Once a team overpays him, he has the right to be overpaid for the rest of his career. That’s the union for you.
I think if TR were still in charge he would have waited to sign a veteran bench player until he was left with a terrible one. So Wild Bill signing one early is the other extreme, he jumped the gun before the market could be established. I think the Wild Bill timing is more forgivable than the TR timing.
You make several good points about Monroe wanting to stick it to the tigers. And as a former member of the team he should have some knowledge about the club that can help us. Maybe that is why they jumped on him, rather than Kevin Mench or Emil Brown. Because lets face it, we don’t need inside knowledge to beat the Royals. At least not yet.
Maybe WB just has to learn what he’s doing in free agency. It’s at least a good sign that he’s forgotten everything he learned about it from TR. Hopefully he’ll know what he’s doing a bit better by the time we have money to spend (and there are worthwhile free agents available).
Although I suppose I shouldn’t say “everything.” Signing Monroe followed the old TR strategy of signing people who kill us. When TR signed Kenny Rogers and Rick Reed, he described them as guys who beat us every time we faced them, so keeping them away from other teams “gets us 2-3 wins right there!” Monroe absolutely smokes the Twins, moreso than any other team. I guess we now get to see if it’s because he loves hitting in the Dome, or because he knows something about our pitchers.
Not to nitpick but didn’t we trade for Monroe? I guess he was probably going to be cut anyway, so we might have been better off waiting for him to be cut and then signing him to a minor league deal. That might have been a way around that union policy of making sure overpaid players stay overpaid.
Good point. Yes, we technically traded for him. But we still had to sign him to a contract ourselves, and the Cubs probably would have non-tendered him anyway, so they get a free PTBNL out of the deal.
It seems to me that since we were the only team allowed to negotiate with him that we should have had the upper hand in pushing down his salary. (Which is probably why the rule exists.)
If we’d let the Cubs release him and then approached him on the market, I don’t think the salary-floor rule would apply, but other teams could have gotten involved … at the time, Wild Bill had no way to know that every other team in baseball would decide not to spend money at the same time, given that A-Rod had just signed the biggest contract in history just a little bit earlier. He probably wanted some certainty, rather than having to outbid someone for the player he wanted.
It may have been another risk that didn’t pay off, but it all comes down to this: I hope WB actually wanted Monroe more than Brown, Mench, and Sweeney.
Either way its a move he made, and it can’t be taken back. Also, Monroe is a close friend of Hunter so I think the acquisition was a last ditch effort to keep Torii in town, or else make it seem like they wanted him to stick around. So when fans complain bill can say “Look, i even traded for his best friend when I know I could have gotten a similar player elsewhere for much cheaper”. Maybe it didn’t have that much to do with the trade, but I’m sure it had at least a little to do with it.
I wonder if Bill is done dealing. The only move I could see him making is for more stability in the starting rotation, but I don’t think there are any good players to be had. Either the player in question is too bad to sign (Kyle Lohse) or the price to acquire him is too high (Joe Blanton). Both cases might be true for lohse.
I would like to see Monroe used as a RH pinch hitter and an occasional starting DH when we are facing a left-handed starting pitcher. I agree he might not be worth what his salary costs, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up starting due to injury at some time this year. My guess is that there will be at least one outfielder go down this year for a while, and I would rather have Monroe fill in as opposed to Jones or McDondald.
FunBobby: I think it’s more likely that WB will pick up a CF than rotation help. He probably wants to get all our young guys experience so we can be set to contend in a year or two.
Grizz: Since I want Kubel to face left handed pitching, I’d only sub Monroe in for him at DH if it’s an especially tough lefty, or a guy with an unusual delivery. Note that Mauer and Morneau started to hit lefties once they got the opportunity to consistently face them. However, this is something I fear Gardy will not do, and will continue to hinder Kubel’s development.
Monroe’s a good 4th outfielder, who can come in and play any OF position and hit decently, and is also available as a pinch hitter. It seems to me that whether or not we overpaid for him is largely immaterial at this point.
I think another key point is that his contract is only 1 year. If I’m not mistaken, White was for 2 at around 2.5 a year. So for all the aforementioned reasons he is a somewhat good addition to the team, and with no only one overly large contract on the books, its not all that bad. I wonder if we could have gotten him at less $$ per year, but would have had to up the years. I almost would rather have him for 3+mil a year for just this year, as opposed to 2 mil a year for 2 or more years. Number of years is always tricky, especially with an older outfielder who has had a rash of injuries recently.
I definitely agree with you about the contract length, when it’s not a young player whom you project to improve over the coming years.
But I still think your Craig Monroe = Rondell White 2 fears are a little overexaggerated. He’s not THAT old, and his injury history isn’t THAT bad. He’s an average player who had a down year at age 30. When we picked up White, he’d just come off a string of disappointing, injury plagued seasons, and was 34.
Didn’t we renegotiate Monroe’s contract and didn’t he end up taking a pay cut? I’m pretty sure he did, but I could be wrong.
It was a paycut but we couldn’t cut him by more than 20% or something like that.