Fire Gardy

Remember earlier this year when I complained about the Twins allowing Dayan Viciedo — the stud 20 year old Cuban defector who was described as “the next Miguel Cabrera — to go to the White Sox, who signed him to a 4 year, $10M contract?

Well, the early returns have not been great. Marc Hulet of Fangraphs describes him as one of 2009 “Prospect Duds,” saying:

Viciedo’s .692 OPS versus right-handed pitchers is cause for concern, as are the scouting reports that focused more and more on his lack of conditioning, which no doubt hindered him at the plate, as well as in the field. He showed worse range than Oakland’s Brett Wallace, widely considered to be a first baseman playing third base (especially based on his range). Unfortunately for Viciedo, he has yet to display enough power to be an asset at first base, and he lacks the mobility for even left field. The Cuban also performed poorly in a small sample size as the designated hitter in double-A, which could be a result of his focus issues.

Basically, Viciedo fields like a DH and hits like a CF … and that’s not going to work.

The hype around Viciedo was impressive, and it sounded great;* he was supposed to be able to step into the majors this year, and he was apparently the White Sox’s best hitter in Spring Training. Obviously, their scouts saw something in the way he was playing that the numbers didn’t pick up, because he sure wasn’t ready.

* Doesn’t it always?

I don’t see any reason to give up on Viciedo, and Hulet even notes that a) the sky is still the limit, and b) he’s still only 20 years old. So while I’m still pretty high on him, at this point I think it’s fair to say I was wrong for getting up in arms about the Twins passing on Viciedo, and it’s certainly not a bad thing that they don’t have $10M invested in a young prospect with declining prospects.

And that’s the thing about teams with more resources; they can afford to take risks that other teams with less resources simply cannot afford to take. The Twins can’t risk blowing $10M on some unproven commodity that might never turn into anything — even though taking those sorts of risks is how you build a great ballclub, without sufficient money you just can’t risk it.

All of which is another reason to be hopeful about Target Field: if it truly does increase revenue enough that the Twins can admit that they’re simply no longer a “small market” franchise, then perhaps they’ll start spending enough money that a $10M gamble doesn’t seem quite so unreasonable any more.

In the long run, I’d call that a good thing.