Fire Gardy

The Twins made a big splash yesterday by signing their second ex-Dodger, Orlando Hudson. This is excellent news because Hudson fills two needs. A secondbaseman and a #2 hitter. Last season with the Dodgers Hudson hit .283/.357/.415, that will look pretty damn good between Span and Mauer.  Defensively, Hudson has lost a step or two lately, but that didn’t stop him from winning a gold glove in 2009. He had a pretty bad UZR/150 number (-3.7), but he must be flashy enough that people think he deserved one.   Regardless, I think he will be adequate defensively, especially if Punto is covering some extra ground at third.

Last season Hudson was paid $3.4 million, but according to fangraphs he was worth a cool $13 million. He was worth 2.9 wins above replacement in 2009, nothing to sneeze at.

For $5 million dollars and one year, I think this is an excellent signing. The biggest question has to be what happens to Punto? There is no way Gardy doesn’t start him, and I guess I don’t have a huge problem with him starting at third. Maybe platooning with Harris, who has historically hit well against lefties. I see the batting order working out like this Span-CF Hudson- 2B Mauer-C Morneau-1B Cuddyer- RF Kubel-DH Hardy- SS Young- LF Punto/Harris- 3B

That’s a pretty solid lineup. Throwing in Thome every once in a while won’t be taking a step backwards, like it usually is when you rest a starter.

So the way I see it, the Twins payroll is now around 95 or 96 million.  I’m glad the Pohlad family wasn’t just blowing hot air when they said payroll would increase with the opening of Target Field.  Everyone get excited, spring training is just around the corner.

Well it’s official, the Twins signed Jim Thome.  The deal is reported to be for $1.5 million, with up to $750K in incentives.  I’m assuming these are plate appearance incentives.  The price tag on this deal seems too good to pass up, so I’m OK with it.

I have two fears that arose with this signing.  The first is that we won’t pursue any middle infield candidates.  The second is that Jim Thome will stunt the development of Delmon Young.  While Thome has better numbers against righties than Young does, Delmon is still very raw.  Maybe Thome will help him develop as a slugger.  Ideally, the Twins will acquire either Lopez or Hudson in the coming weeks, and Thome will be used primarily off the bench and occasionally as the DH depending on the matchup. If we are facing a pitcher who Thome has historically crushed, then by all means start him.

So, let’s hope that Bill Smith isn’t done making moves, but I am not overly optimistic.

See what I did there? Eight is Enough was apparently a tv show at some point in time.

The Twins had eight arbitration eligible players and they signed them today in order to avoid arbitration.  Arbitration is a pretty ugly process, so avoiding it is great. A player basically has to convince a third party why he deserves X dollars, and management has to convince that party why the player doesn’t.  Can you imagine how bridges can be burned if Smith is in a room listing the reasons why Liriano sucks.  With Liriano present. Not fun.

So, here are the contracts:

Pavano- 1 year, $7million

Harris- 2 years, $3.2 million, with various plate appearance incentives included.

Liriano- 1 year, $1.6 million

Hardy- 1 year, $5.1 million

Crain- 1 year, $2 million (that is terrible, by the way)

Guerrier- 1 year, $3.15 million

Young- 1 year, $2.6 million, with various plate appearance incentives.  Should be interesting to see if Gardy benches him down the stretch.  Although the incentives aren’t very significant.

Neshek- 1 year $625K. With a minor incentive  that can kick it up to $700K.

Today was a pretty expensive day for the Twins. I don’t like the 2 million they gave to Crain, I think we would have been better off non-tendering him.  That figure for Guerrier seems a little high.  Especially when we are paying Nathan a boatload of money, you combine that with Crain and that is one pricey bullpen.

I thought Liriano would make a little bit more, but given his crappy year in 2009 I guess I’m OK with throwing him a million and some change in what might be one of his last chances with the team.  If he ends up in the pen, that makes it that much more expensive and upsets me even more.

I don’t really have a problem with giving Harris two years.  He is a useful player who will still be making much less than Nick Punto.

What does everyone else think of the (relatively) big bucks tossed around by the Twins this afternoon? Was it worth it to avoid several ugly arbitration cases? Or would you have like to see Smith take that worthless Canadian Crain down a peg or two?

Last night at midnight eastern was the deadline for players to accept or decline arbitration.  Carl Pavano took his sweet time, and acceptedlate last night.  I think this is a good thing for the Twins.  I was afraid they would foolishly give him the multi-year deal he was looking for.  However, but accepting arbitration, we now know that nobody wanted to give Pavano more than a one year deal.  Prior to 09, Pavano pitched just 145 innings over the course of his stay in the Bronx.  He will need to have a second consecutive 200 ip season to prove he is worth anything more than a one year deal. I obviously hope he does that for the Twins in 2010.

We now have 4 of our 5 rotation spots filled.  With Baker, Slowey, and Blackburn taking the other three.  The fifth spot in the rotation will most likely be fought over by Liriano, Duensing, Swarzak, Manship, and Perkins.  I hope Smith tries to trade the last one, as it seems Perkins and Management aren’t getting along.  At this point Perkins is the definition of expendable. We have 4 back of the rotation guys who have major league experience (3 if you think Liriano is a bullpen arm and nothing more).  We don’t need all four of them.  If someone is willing to give us much of anything for Perkins I say we do it.  Ideally we get some pieces that fill a hole, but the best move now is to just clear out the logjam at the back of the rotation and amongst middle relievers.

What do you guys think? Are you excited to have Pavano back? Who should take the fifth spot in the rotation? What should we do with Perkins?

The deadline to offer arbitration to pending free agents was midnight last night.  As expected the Twins offered it to Carl Pavano.  Pavano  is a Type B free agent, so if he decides to sign elsewhere the team will get a compensatory draft pick.

This move was a no brainer because if he accepts we have him for one year at a reasonable price, and if he doesn’t we get the pick.  Let’s just hope Bill Smith doesn’t sign him to some huge extension to prove to Mauer “we’re building a winner here, and everyone knows Pavano is a winner”. That would piss me off.

Polanco and Orlando Hudson were not offered arbitration so the Twins wouldn’t have to forfeit a draft pick to sign them.  Thus making them more appealing.  I have always been a bigger Polanco fan than Hudson fan but either would give the Twins a huge boost, adding one of them plus JJ Hardy would turn the Twins middle infield from a huge liability to a strength.  Not sure if I can handle that.  I’m so used to the Twins having really crappy middle infielders, and I don’t think Gardy would be happy if we had two GOOD ones.

I’ve talked a good amount of shit about Dave Cameron and his Neyer-esque hatred of the Twins over the years, but he’s not totally blind. When someone — even a Twins player — has an absolutely historic season and is far and away the obvious choice for MVP, he believes that person should, you know, win the MVP. Today he wondered how in the world someone voted for Miguel Cabrera for MVP over Mauer:

Seriously, there is no argument for a first place vote for Miguel Cabrera. Mauer’s team made the playoffs, beating out Cabrera’s team for the last spot. Mauer hit better. Mauer fielded better. Mauer played a more important position.

None of those facts are disputable. A vote for Cabrera being more valuable in 2009 is like a vote for the sum of two and two being five. It’s not an opinion – it’s a lack of understanding.

And as you all probably know, I agree with him. Personally, I debated putting Cabrera somewhere on my ballot, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it; he was essentially the same player as Teixeira and Youkilis this year, and I had them at 9 & 10, respectively. I can easily see an argument for having him in the top 10 … but I simply can’t see how he can be #1 over Mauer, or Zobrist, or Jeter, or Greinke, or Longoria.

Of course, Cameron wasn’t necessarily defending Mauer. Instead, he’s taking up the torch in the ongoing battle between old media and new media:

So, writers who criticized Law for his vote and pointed to it as evidence that he’s screwing up the process, you are hereby required to do the same thing to the Cabrera voter. At least Keith had a reasonable explanation for his vote. There is no reasonable explanation for a Miguel Cabrera first place MVP vote. It’s just stupidity on display.

I like that battle as much as the next guy, I guess. But I don’t think Keizo Konishi should lose his BBWAA voting rights because of this*, just like I don’t think Keith Law should have lost his vote because he didn’t go with the crowd on a particular vote.

* On the other hand, it’s worth pointing out that Miguel Cabrera got a $200K bonus for getting that single first place vote. That’s nothing for Cabrera and his $152M contract; it’s a whole hell of a lot for some nearly-anonymous sportswriter that even Dave Cameron — a Seattle-based blogger/fan — has never heard of. If it turns out that that had anything to do with it, well, then Konishi should absolutely lose his vote. But there’s no reason to suspect that right now.

So let’s all just relax, and not get too worked up about the fact that Mauer got only 27 of 28 first place votes. The voters didn’t blow this one.

Juan Morillo and Justin Huber have both signed with the Hiroshima Carp of the Japanese League.

This isn’t a very big loss.  Morillo could throw really, really hard, but that’s about it.  During his time with the twins in 2009 he didn’t show much progess in his ability to harness the fastball. It would have been nice to keep him around and see if the minor league instructors could work with him, but I’m glad the Twins didn’t bend over backwards to keep him.  That would have been foolish.  But hey, the team is going to make at least one foolish decision this offseason, so here’s to Bill Smith trying to keep them at a minimum.

Justin Huber was a very average player.  He had a decent minor league track record, but no real position.  He will probably have some success in Japan, due to the moderate power he flashed in the minors.  I wish them both the best of luck overseas.

Joe Christensen just brought us an update from the GM meetings in Chicago,* noting that we’ve lost Armando Gabino to the Orioles on waivers, that we’ve placed Juan Morillo on the 40 man roster, and that Justin Huber cleared waivers and is on his way back to Rochester.

* Before I say anything about these moves, I just want to point out that I really would have liked to try to crash these meetings, and was hoping I could figure out where they were happening and maybe sneak in. Could have been fun. Except, as it turns out, they’re holding the meetings at O’Hare airport, which is absurdly far out of my way and is very, very inconvenient. Couldn’t they have gotten a hotel downtown? Is the economy really that bad? Oh well, I guess I’ll just be reporting on the GM meetings from afar, as usual.

First, the Gabino news. He was a mid-level prospect for us the last few years, posting acceptable strikeout rates (consistently around 6.5 K/9 throughout the minors) and low walk rates (2.8 BB/9 in the minors). Basically, he’s exactly the sort of strike throwing machine who can’t strike very many people out that the Twins ostensibly value highly. His problem, though, within the organization is that he’ll be entering his age-26 year, and thus is no longer really a prospect with a huge amount of upside; compound that with the fact that he’s the same age as (or older than) the other pitchers in our rotation — who happen to be the same type of pitcher but more talented than Gabino — and it’s pretty clear he has no place in the future of the organization.

Add to that the fact that Gardy apparently hates his guts, and it’s really no surprise he’s gone. He was called up this year because the team was woefully short of pitchers — and Gardy let him into one game as a reliever and one game as a spot starter, before letting him rot in the bullpen for the rest of the season, refusing to call on him regardless of how badly Keppel and the others were ruining the game. And if there’s one thing we know about the Twins, it’s that if Gardenhire doesn’t like you, you’re going to ride the bench until you’re off the team.

Gabino is not a big loss.

Morillo, of course, continues to be interesting. He posted an excellent 11.7 K/9 this year at AAA, but still can’t harness his blazing fastball as he also posted an abysmal 6.9 BB/9. Apparently the Twins still think they can do something with him, because they’ve decided to protect him from the Rule 5 draft by putting him on the 40-man roster. Either that, or they’re simply astounded by the speed of his fastball, the likes of which the Twins have probably never seen before.

If Morillo winds up playing a significant role in the Twins’ bullpen this year without demonstrating increased command in the minors, it means the Twins are in trouble.

Huber was another guy who Gardy simply didn’t care for; despite posting a reasonably impressive .273/.356/.482 line in AAA, with 22 HR, 22 2B, and an 84/51 K/BB ratio in 506 PA, Gardy apparently couldn’t find more than two plate appearances for the 2B/3B in over a month of service time. I will point out, of course, that Gardy found plenty of work for Matt Tolbert at both of those positions. Once again, September call-ups just meant that Gardy’s doghouse gets bigger.

Normally I’d be a little bit surprised that nobody decided to take a flier on Huber, but this isn’t a normal time. We haven’t seen what to expect from the free agent market this year — it’s possible that prices will be severely dampened by the effects of the economy on baseball teams (most of whose owners simply have no money beyond the massive loans that allow them to call themselves wealthy), and by the glut of free agents on the market. This situation could well be exacerbated by Buster Olney’s prediction that up to dozens of talented arbitration-eligible players will simply be non-tendered rather than offered a contract, further increasing supply in a demand-starved market.

As a result, teams probably wanted to see what happens, as there will presumably be plenty of available players who are simply better than Huber. Perhaps the Twins will be watching, waiting for such an option to pounce on.

This morning, the Twins announced that they’ve picked up Cuddyer’s option for 2011, and will be paying him $10.5M; so Cuddyer will be on the team for the next two years. While it seems weird to me that his contract required the Twins to decide on his 2011 option within 5 days of the end of the 2009 World Series, it’s not at all surprising that they picked it up. Given the reality of his contract, the Gomez trade virtually assured that the Twins would keep Cuddyer around.

As I quoted this morning, Rob Neyer’s take on the Gomez trade was that it was a mistake because the Twins need four outfielders in case Cuddyer gets injured.

So how does Neyer feel about the Twins keeping Cuddyer?

For a franchise that routinely cries poor, $10.5 million is a decent chunk of change.
Particularly for a player like Michael Cuddyer.

He then admits that Cuddyer was worth roughly that much in two of the last three years, before pointing out that by the time 2011 rolls around, Cuddyer is surely destined to be half the player he is today — after all, that’s what happens when a baseball player turns 32.

That airtight logic leads to this conclusion:

No, the difference between Cuddyer’s salary and his value is not a great deal of money. But the Twins have a history of overspending on decent players while complaining about the high price of truly great players. Remember, it was just a year ago that they couldn’t afford Johan Santana but quite happily blew $9 million on Craig Monroe and Livan Hernandez. And if they’re not able to keep Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer in the long term, their money mismanagement is simply going to drop them from contention.

Firstly, I don’t see how the $9M the Twins spent on Monroe and Livan prevented them from spending $120M+ to keep Santana. Secondly, Morneau already has a long term contract, and will be with the team through (at least) 2013. Thirdly, passing on Cuddyer’s option would have been enough for Mauer to forget about signing with the Twins; players want to be on a team with other good players, and Mauer has basically said as much already.

But perhaps most importantly, I just don’t understand how Neyer thinks it was foolish for the Twins to lose Gomez because they need four outfielders, and thinks it was foolish for the Twins to keep Cuddyer because they’d be better off with fewer than three.

The non-Cuddyer RF options for the Twins would have been:

• Jermaine Dye (36 year old Type A free agent)
• Vladimir Guerrero (35 year old Type A free agent)
• Austin Kearns (30 year old not-event-Type-B piece of crap)
• Xavier Nady (31 years old and not as good as Cuddyer)
• Eric Hinske (32 years old and worse than both Kubel and Cuddyer both offensively and defensively)
• Or an internal option like the replacement-level Jason Pridie or the probably-not-ready Rene Tosoni

Or they could switch Delmon Young to RF and go for an LF:

• Garret Anderson (38 years old)
• Jason Bay (31 year old Type A free agent)
• Marlon Byrd (32 years old and probably very expensive)
• Johnny Damon (36 year old Type A free agent, and expensive)
• Matt Holliday (30 year old Type A free agent who’s demanding a Teixeira-sized deal)
• Wily Mo Pena (28 year old former-prospect who once had the potential to be a Cuddyer-like player, but never panned out)
• Gary Sheffield (41 year old malcontent who can’t really play any more)
• The same Pridie/Tosoni options as before

Does anyone really think the Twins would have been better served by sending a message to Cuddyer that they don’t want him around and to Mauer that they’re not dedicated to putting a team together around him, and by giving up a first round pick to spend more money on an older player who’s already been showing signs of age-related decline?

It’s easy to say that spending $10M on Cuddyer is a foolish thing to do, and that therefore the Twins aren’t allowed to complain about not having enough money to sign elite-level players. But when the actual alternatives are giving up a top draft pick for the right to spend more money on an older player who’s essentially the same as Cuddyer, is the criticism really valid?

Once again, Neyer’s Twins-related analysis leaves a whole lot to be desired.

Holy crap, folks.

According to a tweet from the Brewers*, the Twins have traded Carlos Gomez to the Brewers for JJ Hardy.

* Confirmed by both Aaron Gleeman and Joe Christensen

I’m going to let that sink in for a second.

Yes, Wild Bill Smith has done some more dealing. He just unloaded one of the last (disappointing) pieces we got from the Mets for Johan Santana … for a promising shortstop entering his prime years (he’ll be 27 in 2010).

Gomez and Hardy are both coming off down years in 2009; before this season, Hardy was widely viewed as an upcoming star in the game, posting WAR totals of +4.5 and +4.9 (All Star caliber totals) before crashing to +1.4 wins in an injury-plagued 2009 season. Gomez, meanwhile, played himself out of the Twins’ outfield by posting a typically terrible offensive line accompanied by a significant step back in terms of his defense.

This move helps the Brewers shed some salary, as Hardy is entering his third year of arbitration and is probably set to make around $6-7M this season. The Twins, moving into their new stadium, are in position to add some payroll, and this is a strong move that does that while helping the team considerably.

The shortstop question is answered, loudly, for 2010 … and there’s no reason the Twins can’t ink Hardy to a long term extension midseason if they like the cut of his jib. Or get draft picks as compensation if he leaves as a free agent — Hardy is probably set to be at least a Type B free agent. A big year would make him a Type A. But given the dearth of quality middle infield options in the upper levels of the Twins’ system, I’d say an extension is more likely.

Meanwhile, the Twins have sacrificed some excellent CF defense by losing Gomez — and, importantly, some excellent corner-OF defense by having to move Span to a permanent position in CF. Span is a mediocre defensive CF and an elite defensive RF; this move promises more playing time to Delmon Young in LF,* and removes elite defense from both Gomez and Span.

* Unless Gardy finally switches Young and Cuddyer now that the baggy is no longer a consideration?

At the same time, the offense is set to look a whole lot better with this acquisition. Hardy is solid defensively, and has the potential to be a top offensive performer from the shortstop position. He doesn’t have much in the way of plate discipline, but does have some good pop in his bat. I can see Gardy sliding him into the 2-hole, where he’d be a better option than everyone but Mauer, or to shore up the bottom of the lineup.

All in all, I think this is a fantastic move for the Twins. It’s definitely a win-now move, too, which presumably will send a message to Joe Mauer and to prospective free agents that the Twins aren’t playing around.