Here's an interview with someone who's supposed to be an expert in these matters.
And it took only a few comments for discussion on that article to devolve into political monkey dung flinging. What a world, what a world.
I didn't read the comments. Other than here, I almost never do.
This thuggery is more than a little disquieting. What a terrible situation for ballplayers. You make it out of abject poverty, only to become targets of kidnappers.
People (well, commenters) don't seem to realize that Ramos isn't a mega-multi-millionaire. He's a rookie, for cryin' out loud! Yes, he makes pretty good money, but the gravy train hasn't come in yet.
There will be no fall/winter baseball updates over the weekend. I have a conference finance committee meeting in Mitchell tomorrow and our annual parish-wide charge conference Sunday.
Say hello to the corn palace! I love that place.
quasi-edible art! It is a landmark bit of Americana.
From Seth Stohs
Tonight at 7:00 central time, the Mesa Solar Sox will be playing on MLB Network.
I'm glad you picked this one up, FTLT, because I would have forgotten what today was. Cheers, veterans.
I still like to think of 11/11 as Armistice Day. I have no issue at all with using the day to honor veterans, but I think it is more important than ever to honor peacemaking.
I'm with you there.
Plus, you know, it is both Nigel Tufnel Day AND a Cupcake Day for the ages!
What we should have in this country is a national holiday to celebrate the ratification of the Constitution, without which we'd probably be living in a monarchy of some sort with a big army.
My thanks and regards to all vets in the WGOM (or who visit).
Also, tribute to a man who fought in wars in Korea & Vietnam, and served in Panama, Australia, and the Philippines, and dragged his family to airbases in Montana, Iowa, Missouri, the Canal Zone, and retired while stationed at Duluth AFB (working air traffic control in that big cement square building). Also a Legionnaire, and in 40 & 8.
I think the likelihood of this happening is close to zero, but if it does, ZOMG will heads explode.
The Marlins will now have two more shortstops than the Twins.
I'd balls that if it happened.
except the part where that atrocious Red Grooms will be ignited several million times.
Happy Nigel Tufnel Day!
Thank you very much. And to you as well.
CC to Mags: Ireland says Dia dhuit
Phillies to sign Papelbon. Since he's a Type A, it could mean that the Twins won't get a first-round pick if the Phillies sign Cuddyer, too. That would really suck.
The odds are really against a team getting the first-round pick as compensation. First off, half the potential teams that could sign Cuddyer have their pick protected. Second, the system is set up such that it gives teams an incentive to sign multiple Type A free agents in the same offseason, rather than signing one per offseason. The same thing happened with the Brewers and Sabathia, which is a much more legitimate beef for the Brewers than it would be for the Twins missing out on compensation for an average corner outfielder.
i think lost in all this is 4/$50 for papelboner?
I think Philly has mounds and mounds of cash. Sure, it's a reach to pay Papelbon that much, but they are probably close to Yankees territory in terms of what they can afford to pay for each additional win.
This has been floated several times by Philly fans. Since CBP has opened, payroll has continued to rise, especially since 2006. They had a payroll of $165 million last year! Who knows how high it can get.
Philly's got a huge, sports-hungry media market, and they've got it to themselves (at least in terms of baseball.) Their park being sold out probably drives up the value of their TV deal, though I don't know when they signed their most recent deal. They've also had nine straight winning seasons and it's been twelve seasons since they've truly had a bad season. The league could really benefit from deeper revenue sharing, and/or a luxury tax with teeth.
what would you pay for Papelbon?
Now I don't know whether to root for the Phillies to win it all (assuming the Twins don't make the series) so Thome can get a championship, or root against the Phillies to crash and burn because of the extreme d-bag qualities of Papelboner.
jcrasnick Jamey Carroll is closing in on a multiyear deal with Twins, sources say. He would be their everyday SS.
Carroll's been basically as valuable as Cuddyer over the last three years, he plays a position (2B or SS) where we have the least depth, and I bet he signs for a lot less than Cuddyer. Age is an issue, but fast players tend to age more gracefully than slow players, and he had 6 triples and 10 SB (against 0 CS!) last season.
His 2011 OBP starts with a 3 and not a 2. Massive upgrade at SS!
So, we're giving a multi-year deal to a 38-yr-old who's worst defensive position is SS? I thought we wanted to get back to playing good defense?
PANIC!! PANIC!! Come on, it's a tweet, and the term "multi-year deal" is just in there to draw attention. It's probably a two-year deal with an option for a third, if it even exists. And knowing the duration of the deal without knowing the dollars is essentially worthless. If it's a multi-year deal at a low rate, it could still be a good deal.
Second, "whose worst defensive position is SS?" What, that's supposed to be unique? Shortstop is the hardest non-catcher position in baseball, of course it's his worst defensive position. UZR has him as roughly an average defensive SS, which is in line with its view of him as +5 runs/year on defense at second base. Signing a capable middle infielder would certainly be a step towards shoring up the defense.
Sure, its an upgrade, but what wouldn't be? My initial reaction was excited before I saw his age. Plus, I was thinking he was an underrated plus defender, but at least he'll get on base and be a competent shortstop, assuming his age doesn't catch up to him, which is certainly possible. I guess the Twins don't want to go overboard on a SS signing since they may be hoping that Nishioka might pick it up and force himself into the lineup.
There's no good reason to go overboard trying to sign a shortstop. A free agent All-Star shortstop would easily be out of our price range. (Especially since there are teams like the Red Sox who could use an All-Star shortstop and can afford to pay more per win than we can afford.) A mediocre free agent shortstop younger than Carroll is still going to attract a ton of attention and likely won't be worth it for many of the same reasons that whatever contract Cuddyer ultimately signs for probably wouldn't be a good deal for the Twins. After that, you're relegated to the third tier of free agent shortstops, which is where we find guys like Carroll.
Signing Carroll gives us a shot at having an average SS next year, and if we happen to find a better SS sometime before next year, I doubt he'd be all that opposed to sliding over to second base. With a lot of holes to fill, I'm in no position to complain about a low-cost solution at a position where it is often tricky to find talent at a reasonable cost.
This. When I saw the Carroll rumor earlier, I was at first disappointed but then had some hope because the team wasn't mentioned. I didn't think it would be the Twins, but I hoped. I am quite content with this. I don't think he'll necessarily be the shortstop next year, but if he's at second base that's still an improvement.
looks like it's wrapped up:
Ken_Rosenthal Carroll's total guarantee in two-year deal with #Twins expected to be in $7M range. #MLB
i can live with that.
OMG, $3.5M a year!!!!
Frankly, that looks like a pretty good deal all things considered. At a 5-4-3 weighting, Carroll projects to 2.15 fWAR next year. Even if you're really worried about his age and figure the year after that he'll decline a full win, rather than the usual assumption of a half win, that's an expected 3.15 fWAR over the next two years for just $7M. Paying $2M/win for middle infield talent isn't an opportunity you run across every day.
does Carroll play multiple positions?
He's played at least 1,200 innings at SS, 2B, and 3B, and has played a handful of games in the outfield. He has more innings at 2B than at SS and 3B combined.
I am pretty happy with this deal. Not bad, Terry Ryan. Not bad at all.
TERRY RAYN MADE IT HAPEN!!!1!!
Oh, too funny, but I assumed you meant MAFE instead of MADE.
OPPS!
Derek Jeter: born June 26, 1974.
Jamey Carroll: born February 18, 1974
Jeter: 0.7 rWAR last year, 1.3 rWAR year before.
Carroll: 1.8 rWAR last year, 3.1 rWAR year before.
Jeter: $16,000,000
Carroll: $3,500,000
Awesome.
COUNT. ThA. RINGZ.
Does Jamey Carroll have calm eyes? That's easily worth $12.5 milli a year.
Per his Gameday pic, no, he definitely does not.
It seems like most are assuming Carroll would bat second. I'm not so sure. He's not very fast and he bats right-handed. Meanwhile, Casilla is extremely fast, a switch-hitter and plays second base, all things Gardy loves for the No. 2 batter.
There is zero doubt that Casilla would bat second if both are in the lineup.
DK does not endorse this.
Easy. Casilla plays SS, Carroll 2B. That frees up Carroll to bat 2nd! PROBLEM SOLVED.
Even better, Dozier at second and Carroll at shortstop with Casilla the Punto/Tolbot. Then Carroll can bat second until Dozier gets his feet wet.
Really? I get that the Twins paid a bunch of lip service towards making the team faster in the last offseason, but consider:
1 SB, 1 CS -- J.J. Hardy, 2010 with the Twins
22 SB, 4 CS -- Jamey Carroll, last two seasons
With Carroll hitting right-handed, he stands a chance of getting the second spot in the order, since he'd break up Span and Mauer just as well as Casilla would. Casilla has a SB attempt per 7.8 times on base (well, at least hits+walks), and Carroll only has a SB attempt per 12.5 times on base, but that's still on a totally different planet than Hardy's career SB attempt per 79 times on base.
There was so little confidence in Hardy to steal bases that they probably didn't even feel comfortable calling a hit-and-run with him on base. In terms of other small-ball antics:
And if I'm reading fangraphs correctly (with SH being sac hits, and essentially being limited to "successful" sacrifice bunts, and BUH as bunts for hits), then we can roughly guage the ability to sacrifice bunt with:
To be fair to Casilla, we should probably take out the bunts where he was attempting to bunt for a hit, but even then, it's unlikely that he's a better sac bunter than Carroll and Carroll has shown he can do it a lot more than Hardy has.
Basically, I think Carroll is the sort of guy that Gardy feels that he can play small-ball with, so as long as he's hitting better than Casilla, I think he'll stand a shot at hitting second.
Really good deal. A middle infielder who actually should merit being in the #2 spot. And I'll take "just the down side of league-average defense" after Trevor Nishioka.
"We're going to try to win," Ryan said. "There's no question about that. We have some good players here and hopefully over the winter we have our guys report to Spring Training without any of their ailments. So there's no reason to think we won't go through this thing without trying to win."
Between this quote and the signing of a 38-yr-old SS, I think Smith was wanting to rebuild and the Pohlads wanted nothing to do with that, or at least Smith said give me more money or we will have to rebuild.
I hope you are right. I wasn't comfortable with Billy going all McHale on the Twins and spending them into oblivion.
That may have already happened if Morneau can't ever play first or hit decently and Mauer is moved to first base next year.
Nah. Morneau has what, two years left? If Mauer is a total disaster, well, that would be bad. But another bad long term deal would be horrible.
I'll second that. Morneau's deal wasn't so unreasonable, and at some point, you have to pick your poison, and if you're going to invest in someone, Mauer made as much sense as basically anyone you're going to give out $100M+ to. The Twins only have about $55M in payroll obligations for 2013 and $30M for 2014, and obviously none of our future draft picks have been traded away. So the Twins are still in a different world than the hurt that McHale put on the Wolves.
I'm not complaining about the deals at the time they were done, but I'm just saying if the worst-case scenario happens with these two, the Twins will be in a world of hurt for the next couple years.
The same is basically true for any other mid-budget team that sees its best two players have their worst-case scenario happen.
Unfortunately, it appears to be more likely to be true for the Twins than for most other teams.
Worst-case scenario? I think that, individually they're at most at their 90th percentile-worst-case scenarios. Given that there's likely some correllation in tail events (murder-suicide, recreational drugs, criminal enterprise, contagious diseases, on-field collisions, cults, etc.), I'd say that the furthest worst I'd say they are collectively is maybe 95th-percentile-worst.
Yeah, I wonder if it was a difference in opinion of "rebuild" vs. "reload." If trying to win now means signing some relatively modest, short-duration contracts to complimentary players, without trading away any prospects, I don't see a lot of downside to that. (If anything, I'd say Terry Ryan is the best guy to hire if you want to try to win now without totally mortgaging the future, because there's almost no risk of him hitting the panic button.) It would be bad timing to trade away pretty much any of our highest potential players, since they all had down seasons last year, so I'm not even sure what "rebuild" would look like, though I could imagine, I guess. In the meantime, if we could swing a couple of deals like Buchanan-for-Bartlett and Aguilera-for-Lohse, it sure wouldn't hurt.
When you get to this payroll level, it seems like you shouldn't have to do a radical teardown to improve the team.
drewbutera drew
Some say it's crazy but I'm full board work outs all ready. Not gonna let last year happen again
Ummm, I don't think not working out enough was the problem.
I'm picturing Drew practicing his swing with a bushel shovel.
I'd be more encouraged if he was getting at-bats in winter ball, but I can't knock the hustle, I guess. In the interest of complete fairness to Mr. Butera, I present:
.238/.305/.391 -- 2011 AL Catchers
.214/.296/.317 -- Butera, Minors
He was advanced quickly enough through the minors that it's not altogether impossible that his next couple of seasons in the majors, he could have a roughly .300 OBP. Maybe hitting the weights would do him some good, since he hasn't had great power compared to other catchers in the AL. Given that he's good defensively (I think most people believe this), he probably wouldn't be a terrible backup if he could hit .220/.300/.320. Hell, Blanco's made a 14-year career hitting just .228/.293/.369. If he had a little more pop, he might be able to coax some more walks, which he was successful at doing in the minors.
I don't know, I'm really not high on Butera, but if he can take a step forward at the plate, he could be in the bigs for a while. Until then, skepticism reigns supreme.
Love it! In fairness to Butera, he's shown in the minors that he may not end up as one of the worst-hitting non-pitchers of the past few decades.
To draw a bit more distinction between him and Henry Blanco, Blanco got a lot of time in the majors because he was Greg Maddox's personal catcher. If a future first-ballot HOFer picks Butera to be his catcher, Butera could get himself to a decade or more in the majors. And if that happens next year on the Twins, I'll be surprised as hell and pleased as punch.
So, he's not going to spend the year on the major league roster?
We can only hope.
Drew's been on the ML roster for all of the past two seasons. If it's needed, the team should have plenty of options left on him.
Here's a situation that could become familiar to Twins fans: Brian Dozier at bat, with Aaron Hicks (walk) at first and Chris Herrmann (infield single and stolen base) at second. Unfortunately, Dozier flew out.
And then Brett Jacobson gives up four runs in a third of an inning.
An update on Wilson Ramos.
Here's an interview with someone who's supposed to be an expert in these matters.
And it took only a few comments for discussion on that article to devolve into political monkey dung flinging. What a world, what a world.
I didn't read the comments. Other than here, I almost never do.
This thuggery is more than a little disquieting. What a terrible situation for ballplayers. You make it out of abject poverty, only to become targets of kidnappers.
People (well, commenters) don't seem to realize that Ramos isn't a mega-multi-millionaire. He's a rookie, for cryin' out loud! Yes, he makes pretty good money, but the gravy train hasn't come in yet.
There will be no fall/winter baseball updates over the weekend. I have a conference finance committee meeting in Mitchell tomorrow and our annual parish-wide charge conference Sunday.
Say hello to the corn palace! I love that place.
quasi-edible art! It is a landmark bit of Americana.
From Seth Stohs
I'm glad you picked this one up, FTLT, because I would have forgotten what today was. Cheers, veterans.
I still like to think of 11/11 as Armistice Day. I have no issue at all with using the day to honor veterans, but I think it is more important than ever to honor peacemaking.
I'm with you there.
Plus, you know, it is both Nigel Tufnel Day AND a Cupcake Day for the ages!
What we should have in this country is a national holiday to celebrate the ratification of the Constitution, without which we'd probably be living in a monarchy of some sort with a big army.
You mean something like this?
My thanks and regards to all vets in the WGOM (or who visit).
Also, tribute to a man who fought in wars in Korea & Vietnam, and served in Panama, Australia, and the Philippines, and dragged his family to airbases in Montana, Iowa, Missouri, the Canal Zone, and retired while stationed at Duluth AFB (working air traffic control in that big cement square building). Also a Legionnaire, and in 40 & 8.
I think the likelihood of this happening is close to zero, but if it does, ZOMG will heads explode.
not sure if there's enough room on the payroll.
The Marlins will now have two more shortstops than the Twins.
I'd balls that if it happened.
except the part where that atrocious Red Grooms will be ignited several million times.
Happy Nigel Tufnel Day!
Thank you very much. And to you as well.
CC to Mags: Ireland says Dia dhuit
Phillies to sign Papelbon. Since he's a Type A, it could mean that the Twins won't get a first-round pick if the Phillies sign Cuddyer, too. That would really suck.
The odds are really against a team getting the first-round pick as compensation. First off, half the potential teams that could sign Cuddyer have their pick protected. Second, the system is set up such that it gives teams an incentive to sign multiple Type A free agents in the same offseason, rather than signing one per offseason. The same thing happened with the Brewers and Sabathia, which is a much more legitimate beef for the Brewers than it would be for the Twins missing out on compensation for an average corner outfielder.
i think lost in all this is 4/$50 for papelboner?
I think Philly has mounds and mounds of cash. Sure, it's a reach to pay Papelbon that much, but they are probably close to Yankees territory in terms of what they can afford to pay for each additional win.
This has been floated several times by Philly fans. Since CBP has opened, payroll has continued to rise, especially since 2006. They had a payroll of $165 million last year! Who knows how high it can get.
Philly's got a huge, sports-hungry media market, and they've got it to themselves (at least in terms of baseball.) Their park being sold out probably drives up the value of their TV deal, though I don't know when they signed their most recent deal. They've also had nine straight winning seasons and it's been twelve seasons since they've truly had a bad season. The league could really benefit from deeper revenue sharing, and/or a luxury tax with teeth.
what would you pay for Papelbon?
Now I don't know whether to root for the Phillies to win it all (assuming the Twins don't make the series) so Thome can get a championship, or root against the Phillies to crash and burn because of the extreme d-bag qualities of Papelboner.
Carroll's been basically as valuable as Cuddyer over the last three years, he plays a position (2B or SS) where we have the least depth, and I bet he signs for a lot less than Cuddyer. Age is an issue, but fast players tend to age more gracefully than slow players, and he had 6 triples and 10 SB (against 0 CS!) last season.
His 2011 OBP starts with a 3 and not a 2. Massive upgrade at SS!
So, we're giving a multi-year deal to a 38-yr-old who's worst defensive position is SS? I thought we wanted to get back to playing good defense?
PANIC!! PANIC!! Come on, it's a tweet, and the term "multi-year deal" is just in there to draw attention. It's probably a two-year deal with an option for a third, if it even exists. And knowing the duration of the deal without knowing the dollars is essentially worthless. If it's a multi-year deal at a low rate, it could still be a good deal.
Second, "whose worst defensive position is SS?" What, that's supposed to be unique? Shortstop is the hardest non-catcher position in baseball, of course it's his worst defensive position. UZR has him as roughly an average defensive SS, which is in line with its view of him as +5 runs/year on defense at second base. Signing a capable middle infielder would certainly be a step towards shoring up the defense.
Sure, its an upgrade, but what wouldn't be? My initial reaction was excited before I saw his age. Plus, I was thinking he was an underrated plus defender, but at least he'll get on base and be a competent shortstop, assuming his age doesn't catch up to him, which is certainly possible. I guess the Twins don't want to go overboard on a SS signing since they may be hoping that Nishioka might pick it up and force himself into the lineup.
There's no good reason to go overboard trying to sign a shortstop. A free agent All-Star shortstop would easily be out of our price range. (Especially since there are teams like the Red Sox who could use an All-Star shortstop and can afford to pay more per win than we can afford.) A mediocre free agent shortstop younger than Carroll is still going to attract a ton of attention and likely won't be worth it for many of the same reasons that whatever contract Cuddyer ultimately signs for probably wouldn't be a good deal for the Twins. After that, you're relegated to the third tier of free agent shortstops, which is where we find guys like Carroll.
Signing Carroll gives us a shot at having an average SS next year, and if we happen to find a better SS sometime before next year, I doubt he'd be all that opposed to sliding over to second base. With a lot of holes to fill, I'm in no position to complain about a low-cost solution at a position where it is often tricky to find talent at a reasonable cost.
This. When I saw the Carroll rumor earlier, I was at first disappointed but then had some hope because the team wasn't mentioned. I didn't think it would be the Twins, but I hoped. I am quite content with this. I don't think he'll necessarily be the shortstop next year, but if he's at second base that's still an improvement.
looks like it's wrapped up:
i can live with that.
OMG, $3.5M a year!!!!
Frankly, that looks like a pretty good deal all things considered. At a 5-4-3 weighting, Carroll projects to 2.15 fWAR next year. Even if you're really worried about his age and figure the year after that he'll decline a full win, rather than the usual assumption of a half win, that's an expected 3.15 fWAR over the next two years for just $7M. Paying $2M/win for middle infield talent isn't an opportunity you run across every day.
does Carroll play multiple positions?
He's played at least 1,200 innings at SS, 2B, and 3B, and has played a handful of games in the outfield. He has more innings at 2B than at SS and 3B combined.
I am pretty happy with this deal. Not bad, Terry Ryan. Not bad at all.
TERRY RAYN MADE IT HAPEN!!!1!!
Oh, too funny, but I assumed you meant MAFE instead of MADE.
OPPS!
Derek Jeter: born June 26, 1974.
Jamey Carroll: born February 18, 1974
Jeter: 0.7 rWAR last year, 1.3 rWAR year before.
Carroll: 1.8 rWAR last year, 3.1 rWAR year before.
Jeter: $16,000,000
Carroll: $3,500,000
Awesome.
COUNT. ThA. RINGZ.
Does Jamey Carroll have calm eyes? That's easily worth $12.5 milli a year.
Per his Gameday pic, no, he definitely does not.
It seems like most are assuming Carroll would bat second. I'm not so sure. He's not very fast and he bats right-handed. Meanwhile, Casilla is extremely fast, a switch-hitter and plays second base, all things Gardy loves for the No. 2 batter.
There is zero doubt that Casilla would bat second if both are in the lineup.
DK does not endorse this.
Easy. Casilla plays SS, Carroll 2B. That frees up Carroll to bat 2nd! PROBLEM SOLVED.
Even better, Dozier at second and Carroll at shortstop with Casilla the Punto/Tolbot. Then Carroll can bat second until Dozier gets his feet wet.
Really? I get that the Twins paid a bunch of lip service towards making the team faster in the last offseason, but consider:
1 SB, 1 CS -- J.J. Hardy, 2010 with the Twins
22 SB, 4 CS -- Jamey Carroll, last two seasons
With Carroll hitting right-handed, he stands a chance of getting the second spot in the order, since he'd break up Span and Mauer just as well as Casilla would. Casilla has a SB attempt per 7.8 times on base (well, at least hits+walks), and Carroll only has a SB attempt per 12.5 times on base, but that's still on a totally different planet than Hardy's career SB attempt per 79 times on base.
There was so little confidence in Hardy to steal bases that they probably didn't even feel comfortable calling a hit-and-run with him on base. In terms of other small-ball antics:
2.8% Bunt attempts/PA -- Carroll
7.4% Bunt attempts/PA -- Casilla
1.0% Bunt attempts/PA -- Hardy
And if I'm reading fangraphs correctly (with SH being sac hits, and essentially being limited to "successful" sacrifice bunts, and BUH as bunts for hits), then we can roughly guage the ability to sacrifice bunt with:
77.5% SH/(BU-BUH) -- Carroll
50.8% SH/(BU-BUH) -- Casilla
76.7% SH/(BU-BUH) -- Hardy
To be fair to Casilla, we should probably take out the bunts where he was attempting to bunt for a hit, but even then, it's unlikely that he's a better sac bunter than Carroll and Carroll has shown he can do it a lot more than Hardy has.
Basically, I think Carroll is the sort of guy that Gardy feels that he can play small-ball with, so as long as he's hitting better than Casilla, I think he'll stand a shot at hitting second.
Really good deal. A middle infielder who actually should merit being in the #2 spot. And I'll take "just the down side of league-average defense" after Trevor Nishioka.
From MLB.com
Between this quote and the signing of a 38-yr-old SS, I think Smith was wanting to rebuild and the Pohlads wanted nothing to do with that, or at least Smith said give me more money or we will have to rebuild.
I hope you are right. I wasn't comfortable with Billy going all McHale on the Twins and spending them into oblivion.
That may have already happened if Morneau can't ever play first or hit decently and Mauer is moved to first base next year.
Nah. Morneau has what, two years left? If Mauer is a total disaster, well, that would be bad. But another bad long term deal would be horrible.
I'll second that. Morneau's deal wasn't so unreasonable, and at some point, you have to pick your poison, and if you're going to invest in someone, Mauer made as much sense as basically anyone you're going to give out $100M+ to. The Twins only have about $55M in payroll obligations for 2013 and $30M for 2014, and obviously none of our future draft picks have been traded away. So the Twins are still in a different world than the hurt that McHale put on the Wolves.
I'm not complaining about the deals at the time they were done, but I'm just saying if the worst-case scenario happens with these two, the Twins will be in a world of hurt for the next couple years.
The same is basically true for any other mid-budget team that sees its best two players have their worst-case scenario happen.
Unfortunately, it appears to be more likely to be true for the Twins than for most other teams.
Worst-case scenario? I think that, individually they're at most at their 90th percentile-worst-case scenarios. Given that there's likely some correllation in tail events (murder-suicide, recreational drugs, criminal enterprise, contagious diseases, on-field collisions, cults, etc.), I'd say that the furthest worst I'd say they are collectively is maybe 95th-percentile-worst.
Yeah, I wonder if it was a difference in opinion of "rebuild" vs. "reload." If trying to win now means signing some relatively modest, short-duration contracts to complimentary players, without trading away any prospects, I don't see a lot of downside to that. (If anything, I'd say Terry Ryan is the best guy to hire if you want to try to win now without totally mortgaging the future, because there's almost no risk of him hitting the panic button.) It would be bad timing to trade away pretty much any of our highest potential players, since they all had down seasons last year, so I'm not even sure what "rebuild" would look like, though I could imagine, I guess. In the meantime, if we could swing a couple of deals like Buchanan-for-Bartlett and Aguilera-for-Lohse, it sure wouldn't hurt.
When you get to this payroll level, it seems like you shouldn't have to do a radical teardown to improve the team.
Ummm, I don't think not working out enough was the problem.
I'm picturing Drew practicing his swing with a bushel shovel.
I'd be more encouraged if he was getting at-bats in winter ball, but I can't knock the hustle, I guess. In the interest of complete fairness to Mr. Butera, I present:
.238/.305/.391 -- 2011 AL Catchers
.214/.296/.317 -- Butera, Minors
He was advanced quickly enough through the minors that it's not altogether impossible that his next couple of seasons in the majors, he could have a roughly .300 OBP. Maybe hitting the weights would do him some good, since he hasn't had great power compared to other catchers in the AL. Given that he's good defensively (I think most people believe this), he probably wouldn't be a terrible backup if he could hit .220/.300/.320. Hell, Blanco's made a 14-year career hitting just .228/.293/.369. If he had a little more pop, he might be able to coax some more walks, which he was successful at doing in the minors.
I don't know, I'm really not high on Butera, but if he can take a step forward at the plate, he could be in the bigs for a while. Until then, skepticism reigns supreme.
Love it! In fairness to Butera, he's shown in the minors that he may not end up as one of the worst-hitting non-pitchers of the past few decades.
To draw a bit more distinction between him and Henry Blanco, Blanco got a lot of time in the majors because he was Greg Maddox's personal catcher. If a future first-ballot HOFer picks Butera to be his catcher, Butera could get himself to a decade or more in the majors. And if that happens next year on the Twins, I'll be surprised as hell and pleased as punch.
So, he's not going to spend the year on the major league roster?
We can only hope.
Drew's been on the ML roster for all of the past two seasons. If it's needed, the team should have plenty of options left on him.
Here's a situation that could become familiar to Twins fans: Brian Dozier at bat, with Aaron Hicks (walk) at first and Chris Herrmann (infield single and stolen base) at second. Unfortunately, Dozier flew out.
And then Brett Jacobson gives up four runs in a third of an inning.
Ramos found.
Hurrah. Apparently a good ending to what could have been really, really tragic.
Making the rounds on the Book of Face: how to avoid being Penn State (bad word involved)
An awesome collection of video clips of pets welcoming their soldier-owners home from active duty. h/t to Andrew Sullivan's Dish.