Fire Gardy

I know nobody reads the internet when they’re not at work … but remember this weekend when I evaluated the AL Central teams’ value vs salary for their hitters? I do. I also remember saying that as soon as FanGraphs released Win Values for pitchers, I’d do the same for AL Central pitching staffs. Well, today, they did.

Today I’ll just start with the starting rotations.

Twins

Salary: $7M Value: $60.7M

White Sox

Salary: $36.7M Value: $98.8M

Indians

Salary (with CC): $34.5M Value (with CC): $98.9M Salary (without CC): $23.5M Value (without CC): $64.7M 

Tigers

Salary: $29.7M Value: $58.8M

Royals

Salary: $17.6M Value:  $62M

The Twins have a remarkably cheap starting rotation. That $7M figure is one of the numbers that really stands out on here. When you consider that $5M of that went to Livan Hernandez, it gets even more ridiculous. This is part of the value of being able to produce young pitchers — an inexpensive but effective starting rotation is extremely valuable to a team, especially one on a budget*.

I think it’s time to start worrying about these guys hitting arbitration. Especially Baker and Slowey. And Liriano. The nexy couple of offseasons will be rough, and the payroll will skyrocket without adding anything to the team. I hope all the “spend money now for the sake of spending money now” people realize this.

The other striking number is the value the White Sox got. Sure they’re paying a lot of money for their rotation, the most in the division by a considerable margin (well, considerable once you take CC out of Cleveland). However, they’re getting a ridiculous amount of value out of that rotation, far and away the most in the division (again, once you take CC out of Cleveland).

The White Sox built that success mostly on the arms of three pitchers — Mark Buehrle, Jon Danks, and Javier Vazquez — who each contributed over $20M of value. Vazquez is gone, and Danks isn’t as good as Floyd; his numbers will probably come back down. But you can’t take anything away from what the White Sox starters did in 2008. They were simply brilliant, and the front office did a good job of putting that together on the cheap.

Oh, and the Indians probably would have made the playoffs if they’d kept Sabathia (though nobody could have known that at the time). Lee produced $34.9M and Sabathia contributed $34.2M (overall, split between the Indians and Brewers … with most of it actually going to Milwaukee). Without going further in depth, I’m going to go ahead and say that it’s extremely rare to have two pitchers that effective on the same team*.

To give you an idea, they both produced nearly as many wins above replacement as Santana did in the 2004-2006 years, when he was at his peak. Wins weren’t worth as much on the free agent market back then … but Johan was incredible. Probably even more incredible than my rose-colored memory tells me.

The Detroit Tigers have money, yes, but they don’t know how to spend it. For all the money they gave Dontrelle Willis, he contributed negative value to them in 2008. As in, they would have been better off paying him and keeping him in the minors while they have an average AA pitcher in the majors instead. They had only one good pitcher (Verlander) on their staff. They paid Bonderman double what they should have. And even given all that, they still got twice as much value as they paid for.

The Royals got all their positive contributions from Meche and Greinke; both of them were good, and the rest of the rotation was close to nothing. Even with that, though, they outperformed the Twins’ pitchers. Part of that, obviously, is that they used more starters: remove any one of their starters, even the worst one (Duckworth), and the Twins got more value from their rotation. In addition, the Royals used 7 starters last year, while the Twins only used 6.

Part of me says “The higher the Value number is, the better your pitching was.” In some sense, I think that’s true. But if we’re actually talking about Value, then it’s not just what you get; it’s also what you paid for it. So another thing I want to look at is the Value/Salary Ratio:

Twins: 8.66 Royals: 3.53 Indians: 2.75 White Sox: 2.69  Tigers: 1.98

Obviously, that makes the Twins look a lot better. A ratio like that indicates that the Twins are able to put together a quality rotation without spending much (any) money.

The problem, of course, is that it’s not high quality. It’s just quality. And a ratio like that simply doesn’t scale. It could go down in 2009, if any of Baker/Slowey/Blackburn regresses, if Liriano doesn’t continue to show improvement, or if anyone gets injured. (On the other hand, it could go up significantly given that Livan is gone and the rotation will cost under $3m in 2009.)*

Without Livan Hernandez, the Twins spent $2.01M on the rotation and got $53.7M in value, for a truly absurd 26.75 Value/Salary Ratio. Is that the number we should be shooting for in 2009? Is it in any way reasonable to expect this?

Still, building a rotation this way does not scale. There are only so many rotation spots, and pitchers can only add so much value. It’s not reasonable to expect your 4/5 starters to be as effective as your 1/2 starters, and without spending money you’re not going to improve the group. The only way this system can scale is if there’s a constant flow of talented new pitchers coming out of the farm system to replace the guys who got expensive. That flow of pitchers can never dry up, or else your rotation falls apart. That means you can’t sign Type A free agents, because you need draft picks. That means you can’t trade from your strength to fill your holes*. When you don’t have money to spend, you need to focus on the pitching pipeline.

I think this explains everything about the way the Twins are operated, why they value pitching so much, why they don’t chase good free agents, and why they avoid trading pitchers like the plague. Note that Ryan never traded a pitcher until he was done with him and there was a new guy ready to step in. Smith sent Garza packing when Ryan wouldn’t have, and thus far it looks like it didn’t work out. Smith will probably be a bit gunshy on those trades from now on.

The White Sox found that balance in 2008. Between veterans Buehrle, Vazquez and Contreras, as well as talented rookies Danks and Floyd, they put together a high quality rotation using a model that scales. As in, you can spend more money and, if done right, expect that your Value/Salary Ratio will stay the same and you’ll simply have a better team.

I’d like to see these numbers for all the teams in the league. Maybe even go back and do it for previous years. I want to see what the common ratio is. I’d guess that it’s somewhere between 2 and 3; that’s why teams spend a lot of money on pitching, and that’s why the national media thinks it matters what the team’s payroll is. Spending more money leads to better players, therefore the team spending more money will have a better team. (That’s probably also a reason they don’t understand the Twins. How can a V/S ratio of 8 (or 26) even be possible?)

I’d like to see the Twins able to spend more money on their rotation. If they could sign one or two good pitchers to head the rotation, they could keep the pipeline going to fill three spots instead of five, and they’d be able to deal pitchers for hitters. That’s a more balanced system, with more upside than just hoping you get 3-5 good years out of the young pitchers before they’re too expensive and leave for greener pastures. It just requires that we have a bit more money to spend. And it’s getting more and more expensive just to stay where we are.

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On Saturday, the new Mariners’ regime had a sitdown conference with a few hundred fans; they not only spoke about their upcoming plans for the organization, but also opened the floor to questions. It apparently lasted three and a half hours, with no breaks.

It doesn’t sound like they revealed anything Earth-shattering. But I think it’s a good show-of-faith on their part, and a great way to get the fans involved. Unless you’re saying stuff like “We plan to have an eight man rotation,” or “Five infielders and two outfielders is the ideal defensive alignment,” or “Felix Hernandez sucks, we’re going to cut his ass,” this is the kind of thing that can’t go badly.

One interesting bit:

Orgs they respect: Twins came up w/r/t scouting and the continuity of philosophy. Atlanta and the continual reloading during contention.

Once again, the Twins are specifically named as the model other organizations (claim) to aspire to. (Although I personally find it amusing that they said they respect the continuity of philosophy in the same offseason that they’re overhauling their entire front office and installing a new philosophy — are they just saying they want to keep their jobs for the next 20 years?)

Would it hurt the Twins to do something like this? I think the fanbase is hungry for more information from the team, and also for the sense of having more input. One of the many old-school philosophies of the Twins is the “We run the team, and you’re going to sit there and like it” attitude. It’s very Old Media.

Which is simultaneously the reason they won’t put on a similar conference and the reason they shouldn’t do it. As long as they have that attitude, a conference like that won’t work — what made it work for the Mariners was that the new regime has adopted a sense of transparency. They want the fans to trust them, and they’re doing that not by saying “Just trust us,” but rather by saying “Here’s what we plan to do, here’s why, and here’s how.”

While the Twins are a little bit open to the media (and thus, indirectly, the fans), and we pretty much already know their overarching philosophy and “plan,” I simply can’t see them opening up directly to the fans like this. Unless something fundamentally changes.

At the same time, though, should something change? Since the Twins are the model for every small and mid market team, all of whom are trying hard to replicate their success and their process, is it really in their interest to open up and reveal their blueprint, regardless of how interested their fans are?

There are times for transparency, and when half the league is desperately trying to figure out how you do what you do … well, then that’s not one of those times.

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Posnanski has yet another great post up (he’s got about a .990 blogOBP, which is pretty incredible — it’s probably higher than Bill Simmons, definitely higher than Rob Neyer, and without question higher than mine … I’m like the Carlos Gomez of blogging).

This time around, he’s talking about the difference between Adam Dunn and Willie Bloomquist.

As some of you may know, Adam Dunn is a big lumbering slugger. A base clogger with a low batting average who walks a lot and hits home runs. He attempts to play left field, though that’s probably only because he’s always played in the NL — he’s brutal in the field. He’s essentially the prototypical masher, and he’s even been accused of not liking baseball. He plays ball like it’s his job, and he performs his job efficiently and without passion.

Of less interest is Willie Bloomquist, who is essentially the opposite. He can play every position, and clearly loves baseball. He runs around the diamond with passion, and is built from the stuff that inspires young children. Except he hit exactly one extra base hit in 2008, and doesn’t draw any walks. His brand of ball is often exciting, but doesn’t always end up scoring the most runs.

And my point is that I believe every baseball fan, at his/her core, leans Dunn or Bloomquist.* People who believe that on-base percentage and slugging are the most significant things, that defense and speed are overrated, that what matters is what you do and not how you look doing it lean heavily Dunn. The New York Yankees have leaned heavily Dunn: Get on base, slug the ball, don’t worry too much about catching it. And so on.

As soon as I read that, I was thinking about myself and the Twins. Philosophically, I believe I lean toward the Bloomquist way; I thoroughly enjoy the smaller things about baseball, a good play in the field, and I like swinging at the first pitch and I don’t like watching walks. At the same time, however, I understand intellectually that it’s not realistic to find nine players who can field well and hit .330 with a bit of power — in fact, it’s remarkable that we have two of them on the same team at the same time*. Drawing walks and hitting home runs is a better, more consistent way of scoring more runs, which is really the crux of the game.

A lineup full of Albert Pujols would score over 1400 runs per season. He hits for average and power, and he draws walks. He’s basically just awesome. The only thing that could be better is if he were a switch hitter and/or a shortstop. But those are pretty unreasonable demands for the best player in the sport.

The Twins, as an organization, lean drastically toward Bloomquist. If we weren’t stuffed to the gills with outfielders and utility players, we’d probably have been in the running for Bloomquist — he’s the type of player the Twins like to have. The only guy on the team who draws walks is Mauer*, and the only reason he’s there is because he’s the hometown boy and we got absurdly lucky.

Also Span, but the only reason he’s there is because we didn’t know he’d draw walks at the major league level — he never did in the minors. Well, the real reason he’s there is because we thought he’d be the next Torii Hunter back in 2002. That means we thought he wouldn’t draw any walks. Also, are we all convinced now that Span is going to be good forever? Up until Spring Training last year, he was a complete and unmitigated bust in everyone’s eyes but his own. By Opening Day, he may not have been a bust but he still sucked. Now he’s the third best hitter on our team after Mauer and Morneau and is the established leadoff hitter. Maybe players can turn the corner like that after having almost no success in the minors; maybe the eye surgery really made that big a difference; maybe his five-six years in the minors are meaningless and his one year in the majors is his true level of talent. But maybe not. Why are we all convinced all of a sudden?

Of course, Posnanski is one of the few people outside of Minnesota that seems to think regularly of Minnesota. I think part of that is because he’s spent his life in Cleveland and Kansas City, rather than New York and Boston and LA, and therefore notices and respects a place like Minnesota because of both proximity and the apparently consistent ability to do more with the same meager resources.

At the same time, there are plenty of people in the game and in the stands who believe that you win by doing the little things, by playing defense and running out ground balls and playing the game with passion every day. They lean heavily Bloomquist. The Minnesota Twins, for instance, lean Bloomquist.. The Twins run and catch the ball and they have not worried too much about power or on-base percentage. This, no doubt, frustrates the heck out of a lot of Dunn-leaning Twins fans.

Yes, here in the blogosphere, there are a lot of angry Twins fans. They don’t understand why the Twins are stuck on guys like Punto rather than guys like Dunn. They feel like the team is overrating defense and versatility and underrating walks and power. Maybe they’re right, but the thing is, that’s who the Twins are. It’s what they’ve always been. Some teams have changed their philosophies over the years — they fire their GMs and managers and replace the front office to get a new philosophy installed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes the organization doesn’t wait long enough to find out and starts over. The Twins value loyalty, and have never done that. They stick with their front office until they decide to retire, then allow them to name their own successor. We may be annoyed by this, and fear the the next manager will be Scott Ullger rather than Stu/Stan Cliburn, but this is how it works in Twins Territory.

So I think we should try not to really get our hopes up about signing Adam Dunn or Manny Ramirez, even though thinking about it is fun for a little while.

We should stop hoping that Gardy wakes up one morning having had a revelation during the night that walks are important and we should try to value getting on base and scoring runs as opposed to hacking at every pitch we can see. It’s not going to happen*.

Which is too bad, since it’s kind of the point of this blog. Oh well. Just like Gardy’s not going to stop, neither are we. Will it be like the unstoppable force meets the immovable object? Or will it be more like the less cliched, more likely scenario in which the force is not technically unstoppable nor is the object truly immovable, and they don’t end up meeting at all? You decide.

But at least the Twins organization knows who they are. Dayton Moore of the Royals has been saying since he got there that he believes in OBP and it’ll help them score more runs and he’s going to instill in his players the wisdom of the bible of OBP. Except then he always turns around and acquires guys with a .300 OBP, which just isn’t helping the cause. At least when we pick up a .300 OBP guy we don’t say “he gets on base a lot,” which is how Moore described Bloomquist.

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I know people only read this site on weekdays between 9 and 5 (which is interesting, of course), but I thought today would be a good time to look at value.

I want to compare the monetary value a team actually received from their players, and compare it to the dollars paid out. For now, I’ll just do this for the AL Central. I’m getting my value-received numbers from FanGraphs, and my dollars-paid numbers from Cot’s Contracts (for payroll) and Baseball-Reference (for calculating individual salaries — turns out Cot’s has already updated some things and they no longer have some of the players; for example, Adam Everett is with the Tigers instead of the Twins, Edgar Renteria, Joe Crede, and Orlando Cabrera are gone, etc).

I first just checked the total team payroll … but the FanGraphs win value projection doesn’t include pitchers right now. It’s just for hitting and fielding. So the total team payroll isn’t accurate — I have to remove the cost of the pitchers, and include only the hitters. It’s not the best, but we’ll just have to wait until FanGraphs calculates pitcher win values and adds them to their site.

Twins:

Value received: $72.2 million Team payroll: $56.9 million Hitters payroll: $37.6 million Value gap: +34.6 million

White Sox:

Value received: $86.7 million Team payroll:$121.2 million Hitters payroll: $79.6 million Value gap: +7.1 million

Tigers:

Value received: $76.0 million Team payroll: $137.7 million Hitters payroll: $95.8 million Value gap: -19.8 million

Indians

Value received: $95.8 million Team payroll: $79 million Hitters payroll: $34.8 million Value gap: +61 million

Royals

Value received: $66.7 million Team payroll: $58.2 million Hitters payroll: $30.7 million Value gap: +36 million

I don’t know how valuable these numbers are. One thing is obvious — the Tigers didn’t get what they paid for last year. They paid the most for their hitters, and they got barely more than the Twins and Royals. The Indians got by far the best value, paying as much as the Twins and Royals but getting far more than all the other teams in the division.

It’s a small sample size (just one year, just five teams), but I wonder if this can tell us anything about how valuable it is to the team to raise payroll. It seems easy for teams to get great value from their hitters if they don’t spend very much — because a higher percentage of their players are making the minimum. And presuming all your free agent contracts work out as planned, the value gap diminishes until all your players are free agents and the gap is zero; of course, if the contracts don’t work, you’re the Tigers and you’re overpaying for old veterans who can’t provide the production you’re paying them for. Oops.

Another thing to look at, value-wise, is the offensive and defensive contributions to total value.

Twins

Offense: -2.9 Defense: -25.5

White Sox

Offense: 22.7 Defense: -18.0

Tigers

Offense: 18.1 Defense: -38.0

Indians

Offense: 18.8 Defense: 6.2

Royals

Offense: -55.2 Defense: 19.2

This paints a slightly different picture, and gets to what the teams are actually trying to do to build their team. The Twins’ defense was the worst it’s been in a long, long time; this indicates the team’s intent to sacrifice a little bit of defense to improve their offense, which was the cry of the fans for the past few offseasons. The problem is that they sacrificed a lot more defense than they should have, and they didn’t get any offense back. Their offense was quite a bit worse than the White Sox, Indians, and Tigers. The Twins were the only team to be bad on both offense and defense — if it weren’t for their unusual “ability” to hit with runners in scoring position, we would have been a pretty weak team. (Of course, this isn’t taking pitching into account; it’s possible that the Twins’ pitching made up the difference.)

Meanwhile, the Indians were the only team to be good on both offense and defense. If it weren’t for their rough start to the season, they would have run away with the division. Consider us lucky … and don’t expect it to happen again. They’ll be dangerous in 2009, especially if Hafner and Martinez get healthy and remember how to hit.

The White Sox and Tigers have similarly built teams — “Just get me a bunch of sluggers, I don’t care what position they play!” As a result, they both have a slew of expensive, 1B/DH types who smash the ball but don’t wield their gloves that well. It’s not a great way to build a team, since it tends to be the most expensive way; sluggers demand the biggest, longest contracts despite being unable to field their position and aging faster than anyone. But if you have the money, it can work.

I don’t know if this taught us much. The Tigers and White Sox want sluggers, the Indians are a well balanced team that gets great value given its payroll, the Royals have no idea how to construct a team, and the Twins need to drastically improve either their offense or their defense without sacrificing the other (which should be possible given that not many teams are below average both offensively and defensively).

If I were to make some guesses for 2009, I’d say that the Indians will probably have production about the same, maybe a bit better, and it’ll actually be reflected in their record this time around. The Tigers may have some rebound from some players, but continued decline from others, and will probably be a non-factor again. The White Sox will be good again; their sluggers have suffered their decline and are now sitting at a lower, still-effective plateau while their young players are improving and their pitching is solid. The Royals are going nowhere, given their expenditures this offseason and the fact that they’re acquiring cheap/ineffective 1B/DH types to combat the Tigers’ expensive ones, rather than building from the center like you’re supposed to. The Twins need to rely on improvements from their young players (pretty likely), including a drastic jump in production from Delmon Young both offensively and defensively, offensive improvement from Gomez and Casilla, and Buscher/Harris solidifying their defense while contributing a little at the plate.

Unless the Twins shock the world and upgrade at 3B or DH, I’d expect the 2009 AL Central to look about like this:

Indians Twins White Sox Tigers Royals

And since it’s the Twins, it’ll probably go right down to the wire and be another exciting summer. I can’t wait.

(35 days until pitchers and catchers!)

1 comment

Okay everyone, remember in my last post when I mentioned that Reusse had claimed that the Royals were making moves that would somehow vault them out of the AL Central Basement? Well, it seemed pretty dubious at the time. And, like the good statistical guys that they are, the guys over at FanGraphs have taken a look at their acquisitions this winter.

Here’s a quick synopsis:

Kyle Farnsworth - 2 years, $9 million, 2006 to 2008: 0.1 wins above replacement Mike Jacobs - 1 year, $3.5 million, 2006 to 2008: 0.7 wins above replacement Horacio Ramirez - 1 year, $1.9 million, 2006 to 2008: 0.2 wins above replacement Willie Bloomquist - 2 years, $3 million, 2006 to 2008: 0.3 wins above replacement

Those Win Value totals are not per year, but three year totals. Over the last three seasons, that foursome has been worth 1.3 wins combined. That’s 12 player-seasons to accumulate just over one marginal win. If you were trying to scrape up examples of major league players who represent replacement level performance, you couldn’t do much better than this group.

That those four will earn a collective $11.4 million in 2009 is pretty staggering. $11.4 million for four guys who, if everything goes right, will add something like one win to the Royals roster next year. $11.4 million for one win. I guess it’s better than the $12 million they spent to get 0.2 wins from Jose Guillen last winter, but that’s in the same way that getting stabbed is better than getting shot.

The Royals are essentially doing exactly what Reusse and his ilk would recommend — making a quick slew of moves that you can “sell” to your fanbase, essentially saying “look at this, we’re trying really hard!” The problem is that these are terrible, unbelievably dumb moves that make the team worse and cost a lot of money, especially compared to what you’re getting.

Replacement level players are supposed to cost you league minimum, maybe just a little above it. You’re supposed to be able to get replacement level talent from your AA and AAA teams, just in case you need to replace an injured/departed player. You’re not supposed to throw free agent megabucks at replacement level “talent.” But that’s what the Royals are doing. They’re paying $11.4M for one win — when a win costs $5M on the free agent market. And they’re doing it over four players, who all get playing time and take up roster spots. That’s almost worse than Jose Guillen’s situation — and that’s saying a whole lot.

And that, of course, is why they’re the Royals.

Is anyone else afraid that they’re suddenly going to leapfrog us?

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Patrick Reusse is a sad, cranky old man.

What’s making him sad and cranky these days? Well, it’s the fact that Bill Smith isn’t running around like a crazed, headless chicken, throwing dollars and prospects at everything that moves. In his recent article, Reusse spends the first 60% of his prose poking fun at the recently deceased Pohlad, knocking Smith for his reputation as Assistant GM, attempting to come up with lame new nicknames, and pointing out that the other AL Central teams are all destined to win the World Series in 2009 while the Twins go 0-162 — after all, the Indians made a bunch of win-now moves, the Royals have made “moves that could give it a chance to keep moving forward from last season’s lofty fourth-place finish” (ooh, I’m shaking in my boots), the Tigers keep moving backwards, and the White Sox have “have lost more assets than they have gained.” Clearly, the Twins need to act afraid now, since those four teams have clearly improved themselves so much!

He bemoans the fact that we signed Nick Punto, because it wasn’t enough — more! He insults RA Dickey, as if he expects Gardy to roll into Opening Day with the old knuckleballer on the roster. Reusse wants moves! He wants Smith to make a fool of himself so he can point out why the moves won’t work!

Smith flinched at giving a third year to free agent Casey Blake, an answer at third base. Smith flinched at exceeding the package of marginal prospects Cleveland sent to the Cubs for Mark DeRosa, a better answer at third.

Well, we’ve talked about this before, of course. Giving a third year to Blake would have been foolish, and the Dodgers will regret that. But they’re more accustomed to making expensive mistakes with their roster — hello, Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones — while the Twins would rather avoid paying someone several million dollars when they’re old and incapable of actually playing baseball. Weird. And the Cubs didn’t give the Twins the chance to give them something between the Indians’ miniscule package and the Slowey/Span/prospects deal they demanded from us — that’s not Smith’s fault. And Derosa’s a one year rental anyway. Does Reusse really think his career 97 OPS+ would look that great in our lineup?

Then we get to the true gold of the article. Reusse lists the possible options that Smith might have available to improve the team. With each one, he gives a surprisingly lucid explanation of why signing them would not work out or be in the Twins’ interest or even be possible. Then, for each one, he accuses the Twins of being foolish, cheap, and afraid, due to the fact that they’re not out there stupidly taking risks and spending money, for the sole purpose of creating news for Reusse to complain about. It’s no wonder newspapers are going out of business. Patrick Reusse works at one.

I particularly love this line:

the Twins have missed on enough expensive first-rounders that an elite setup guy such as Cruz would be worth sitting it out this time.

Oh yes. It works on so many levels! The Twins have missed on a whole slew of “expensive” first-rounders — like Torii Hunter, Jason Varitek (asshole), Todd Walker, Michael Cuddyer, Joe Mauer, Denard Span, Glen Perkins, Matt Garza, plus great current prospects Ben Revere and Aaron Hicks (who many scouts say may be the best talent in the minors right now). That’s just a terrible, unforgivably bad haul for the first round. I mean, they’re only batting .500 with their first round picks! All the other teams draft nothing but uber-prospects in the first round. In fact, I can’t think of another team who has EVER drafted ANYBODY in the first round who didn’t end up being a FUCKING SUPERSTAR. So yes, the Twins would be better off just not trying to draft people any more.

And also, Reusse was just talking about the fact that Cruz wouldn’t even sign with us because he wouldn’t be our closer. So it’s not even relevant whether Reusse thinks we should sign the guy. It’s a good thing we’re talking about it!

On Tuesday, the Twins allowed themselves to be outbid (two years, $10 million) by Baltimore for Koji Uehara, a righthander from Japan.

I don’t think I can handle it any more. You mean to tell me that the Minnesota Twins, with a rotation of 25-and-under players making the minimum (ie, the entire rotation costs $2.5M), all of whom have demonstrated at least some success in the majors, and an entire pipeline of another dozen top pitching prospects ready to step in if anyone falters, failed to outbid a team that has a shot at running out the worst rotation of all time? How did we let this happen? Also, why should we spend twice as much money on an unproven back-of-the-rotation Japanese guy than on the entire rotation, when everyone else in the rotation is better than he is? Who in blazes cares if Uehara went to Baltimore? Good for him! It just means that A-Rod and Longoria will be smashing home runs off him instead of Jim Thome and Miguel Cabrera.

Five weeks from spring training, Smith’s second offseason needs to gather momentum to reach abysmal.

And thus, we’re finished. I think it’s been pretty conclusively demonstrated that doing stupid things that hurt the team is better than not doing stupid things. That’s why this offseason has, somehow, been worse than abysmal. We should have given Casey Blake three years and more dollars! We should have traded Slowey and Span for Derosa! We should sacrifice our first round pick (which has a 50% chance of becoming a good major leaguer for us for a period of six years) in order to get our hands on an overpriced relief pitcher (who are by definition unpredictable and short-lived) for two or three years!

Failing to be a horseshit GM isn’t much of a failure. Just saying.

5 comments

FunBobby wrote this morning about hunting for bargains, and that more prices may drop as the offseason progresses and free agents actually get worried that they’re squeezing themselves out of a job. I think that’s more than possible, and it’d be a good thing. Especially for a mid-market team like the Twins.

Speaking of which, remember when we were talking about Orlando Cabrera? The Twins were allegedly thinking about him, before breaking off talks a while back. Well, he’s still unsigned, and our fellow mid-market Blue Jays have this to say about him:

“I like Cabrera, and think he could help us,” one highly ranked Blue Jays executive said. “But I cannot justify giving up a pick for a 34-year-old shortstop on a one- or two-year deal. It makes absolutely no sense for us. None.”

In my mind, it’s pretty likely that the Twins had similar (if not identical) discussions internally, which is why they moved on. Of course, losing a draft pick when signing Cabrera would be even worse for the Twins than the Jays — the draft pick would go directly to the hated White Sox. We can’t afford to let that happen, so we have to walk away from Type A free agents.

And we’re not the only team that’s thinking that way these days. Most small and mid market teams are starting to put a huge value on their draft picks, in an attempt to stock their farm systems and build a successful franchise, in the model of the Twins (and now also the Rays). As Billy Beane will attest, the most important thing to do is to be contrarian — when teams were overvaluing batting average and RBI, he valued OBP and built a good team cheaply. Now, teams are starting to overvalue their own farm systems and draft picks, at the expense of aging free agents — and Beane is making a strong push to take the AL West by spending money.

Now, I’m not about to advocate that the Twins start signing Type A free agents, especially to short-term contracts (the value of a lost draft pick is mitigated if you get many years of high level production out of the free agent — short term contracts are just foolish in this case). But, again like the Blue Jays are hoping to do, it may help us keep our hands on our own guys, and extend them before they reach free agency. By pointing out that they like the city and they like their teammates and they’ve got a good thing going, and most importantly pointing out that the gap in dollars that we can offer versus the dollars waiting in free agency is shrinking, we become more likely to extend our young players before they get to free agency. Not necessarily the Mauers (though that’d be great), but the somewhat lesser but still important players like Baker, Slowey, and Span.

Even with the economy the way it is and the ownership in transition, there are opportunities out there for the Twins. Whether it’s taking advantage of the market to get Dunn on a one year deal, or waiting for Wigginton’s price to drop into our comfort zone, or extending our young players before they get expensive, the Twins can make things happen that can help the team today and in the future.

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Maybe Bill Smith hasn’t been sitting on his hands all offseason.  Maybe he has just been waiting for prices on everything to drop.  For a lot of free agents this offseason, its been a staring contest between teams and players, waiting to see who blinks first.  Outside of the Yankees, most teams have been good about not caving to initial demands.  Scott Boras looks like an idiot now after telling all of his clients to decline arbitration.  Some say the Union suggested big name players do this as well.  The players who are in the most trouble are the ones who cost a draft pick.  Juan Cruz is a name that stands out to me.  He was pretty good last year, but doesn’t have that much of a track record.  So why should a team pay him a ton of money, and give up draft picks?  He could end up on a bad team whose picks are protected, but those are the teams who won’t give him a big contract.  A catch-22 really.  I could totally be misusing that phrase, but who cares.  I do what I want.

I believe the players will blink first.  They are the ones who are unemployed.  Could the price of Ty Wigginton (for example) drop so low that he falls into the price range of the Twins.  Say what you want about Wigginton, but the price was the thing keeping me away, not his skillset.  If we can get him for two years, why not.  I have a feeling some players might sign a one year deal, hope they have a kickass year, and then next year go for the mega-bucks.  Who knows, the economy might have rebounded by then, and teams will have more money to throw around.  That would be in the best interest of the Twins, because we could nab a few normally high priced vets at bargain prices for the short term. They in turn are playing for their next payday so they but up good numbers for us, and we all part of good terms at seasons end.  It’s a win-win.  Thoughts?  Did Bill Smith do the right thing by waiting for prices to drop, or was he foolish to make no moves early in the offseason?  Did most of the agents overestimate their clients ability to get a big contract?

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People have been talking about Manny Ramirez lately. A lot. The latest rumor seems to be 3 years, $63M from the Giants. Given the fact that Burrell went for 2/$16M, and Dunn is still available, that seems really high. Manny’s numbers are sure to come down.

Baseball Prospectus had this to say about possible AL suitors:

AL teams with holes at DH or even in left field should be coming in on Ramirez given where the price of relative talent lies. The White Sox list a bit to the right, but they were running DeWayne Wise out there in the postseason, so clearly there’s some need for a major league left fielder, and Ramirez could move to DH when Jim Thome’s contract expires after this season. The Indians‘ inability to get production from the corners hurt them last season, and only Shin-Soo Choo is clearly worthy of playing time. Ramirez would also insure against the continued failure of Travis Hafner. By the way, Hafner’s four-year, $57 million extension is just kicking in now, and it’s been nearly two years since his last stretch of productivity. He’ll be 32 in June.

So … the White Sox and Indians are the main options? Sure, they’re teams willing to try to hit home runs. But if you’re going through the AL Central looking for teams that could use a little more production out of their DH, I don’t see how you can overlook the Twins.

Here’s what we got from the DH slot last season:

.269/.344/.438, 19 HR, 98 R, 94 RBI

This season our DH is Kubel, and here’s what he did:

.272/.335/.471, 20 HR, 74 R, 78 RBI

Here’s what Manny Ramirez did last season:

.332/.430/.601, 37 HR, 102 R, 121 RBI

And, given Manny’s price and problems … here’s Adam Dunn:

.236/.383/.513, 40 HR, 79 R, 100 RBI

Kubel, obviously, is the cheapest option. And while Dunn stands to be fairly inexpensive (given Burrell’s contract with the Rays), I don’t know if the marginal gains over fellow-lefty Kubel justify the massive cost bump. Ramirez might actually be worth the money for us — can you imagine him hitting between Mauer and Morneau? Because I can, and it’s awesome.

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It’s been a little slow in Twins-land since the owner passed away, so I’ll just jot down some quick notes here.

• As long as everyone is telling the truth about Mauer’s kidney surgery — ie, that it went well, he’s fine, and will be ready for the season — I think it’s great. I’m a little miffed that we weren’t made aware of this allegedly lifelong problem earlier, but not nearly as miffed as I would have been had he played in the World Baseball Classic. I’m all for supporting your country and all, and I’ll be watching every game I can and rooting for Team USA, but at the same time there’s no way I want Mauer catching 190 games this year. It seems to me that the timing of the surgery was deliberate; he’ll be ready for the season and gets to bow out of the WBC without actually “refusing.” Nice work Joe.
• Over at FanGraphs.com, they’ve come up with something called Win Value. It essentially counts how many runs a player is worth both offensively and defensively (versus replacement level, which is significantly below average), then uses the assumption that 10 runs is equivalent to 1 win to determine how many wins above replacement a player is. Then, and this is the interesting part, they use the “market value” of a win on the free agent market (which is different each year, increasing steadily since they started measuring it) to determine the monetary value of that player in each year. The reason I bring this up is because they have Joe Mauer pegged at $25.7 million in 2008. But, in their ongoing series explaining Win Values, they mention something about catcher defense: they haven’t figured out how to quantify it yet, so all catchers are assumed to be average and equivalent to each other. So if the catcher is outstanding defensively (they specifically mention Joe Mauer), they’d add a full win to his total. At around $5M per win, they’re essentially valuing Mauer at $30M per season. (Well, per MVP-caliber season. He’s batting about .500 on those. Which is a whole lot better than most great players.) I think we need to do what we can to extend Mauer’s contract as soon as possible … otherwise we’re screwed and he’s going to be playing elsewhere in 2011.
• Former Twin and current World Series champion JC Romero was busted this week for steroid use. Upon hearing his side of the story (he bought something that wasn’t labeled as bad, wasn’t on any lists, got a trainer opinion, a second trainer opinion, asked the players’ union about it, finally took it, then it was banned after that and he tested positive for it), I thought the 50 game suspension was pretty steep. It sounded obvious that he didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I’ve since learned that the substance he purchased was 6-OXO, which increases testosterone, and has a label that says, essentially, “If you play a sport, this substance is probably banned in that sport.” Also, he tested positive for androstenedione, of Mark McGuire fame. Romero doesn’t seem that innocent any more. But overall, this sounds like another StarCaps case, where the players are trying to do their due diligence, the league and the players’ union drop the ball, then they throw the players under the bus and suspend them for the league’s mistakes. Nobody’s in the right here, but I don’t think Romero should be the one paying the full brunt of the penalties for this.
• The Indians, after a disappointing 2008, have been moving fast this offseason. They were involved in the 12 player mega-deal that sent JJ Putz to the Mets, they signed Kerry Wood, they acquired Mark Derosa, and now they’ve signed Carl Pavano. People are often disappointed and even angry that the Twins don’t make more moves and try to improve the team with the same sense of desperation that the Indians seem to have right now. But that’s just the thing — the Indians reek of desperation. Wood is good, but do you really think Mauer and Morneau are incapable of winning games off him? Do you also think he’ll stay healthy? Derosa, as I’ve mentioned before, will come crashing back down to earth now that he’s out of Wrigley, and they’d regret that trade if they’d actually had to give up anything. Carl Pavano is Carl Pavano — which means he’ll make a couple of mediocre starts and get hurt. The fact that the Indians are throwing so much at the wall and trying so hard tells you exactly one thing — that they know how good the Twins (and White Sox) are. We don’t have to act with the same desperation.

That’s all I’ve got right now. I kind of like that format. Maybe I’ll do it again.

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