Hitting the Foul Pole

Albert Pujols has set a deadline of noon (eastern) today for the Cards to reach a deal with his agent. If they don’t come up with something, all contract talks will be (allegedly) tabled until the offseason.

The Twins were in a somewhat similar situation with Joe Mauer last year.  Mauer was entering the last season of his contract, and would have been able to name his price on the open market.  I was torn at the time.  I didn’t want the Twins to overextend themselves, and hamper their ability to remain competitive for the duration of the contract. What if Joe got hurt and couldn’t catch anymore? He was earning a mega-contract based on the fact that he was not only an excellent hitter, but a great catcher.  That double threat doesn’t come along very often.  At the catcher position you usually sacrifice one or the other. Well, last spring Mauer signed an 8 year/184 million dollar contract that runs from 2011 through 2018. That is quite the commitment the Pohlad family made to the hometown hero.

I feel for Cards fans.  They are in a similar tax-bracket as the Twins, so they really can’t (or shouldn’t) tie up a large portion of their payroll with one player.  They are also playing in a new stadium, and have on the field success over the last few years. The Cards recently committed a ton of money to Matt Holliday, so if they miss out on Pujols I’m sure many will point to that as one of the reasons why.  My theory on the whole thing is the Cards should let him walk if they think his contract (along with the rest of their long term commitments) will hamper them competitively over the life of the deal. After this season both Prince Fielder and Adrian Gonzalez will be free agents.  Now, neither of those guys are Albert Pujols, but they are certainly a nice consolation prize. Pujols had an MVP caliber year last year, and the Cards were beat out by the Reds for the NL central title. Since Pujols joined St. Louis in 2001, he has been worth a grand total of 80.6 wins above replacement. Using fangraphs’ fancy new WAR grids we find out that leads all players for that time period.  The next closest is A-Rod, at 71. That’s a pretty significant gap. All that tells is that Pujols has been the best player in baseball over his career.  We already knew that though, didn’t we? Working in the financial services sector I had to amend the following to all of my outgoing emails “past performance does not guarantee future results”. The Cards can’t pay Pujols hundreds of millions of dollars based on what he has done over the last ten year, but what they think he is capable of over the next ten.  If they believe he can perform at a high level for the life of the contract that, then by all means give it to him.  However, if they think they will be grossly overpaying an aging former superstar for a good chunk of it, then they might be better off letting him walk. The Cards apparently have some of the smartest fans in baseball, so they should know the game is about teams not players. Will they find the next Albert Pujols? Probably not.  Are they capable of winning without him? I certainly think so. It might be a bitter pill to swallow for Cards fans, but there can and will be life after Albert.

Last week, the Twins signed Francisco Liriano to a one year, $4.3M deal to avoid arbitration this year. It was a wise move — salary arbitration can be a rough process, with potential ramifications for the relationship between the team and the player, because in the course of making its case the team essentially has to do everything it can to insult the player. Additionally, the Twins have in the past signed a deal like this one to avoid arbitration while continuing to work on a long term extension; that’s exactly what they did with Morneau, ripping up and replacing his one year contract with a six year extension after just one week.

So, a week later, what happens? Well, we get a report from Joe Christensen that says that the Twins’ relationship with their ace left hander is apparently already sour, and they do not plan to give him an extension — in fact, he says that trading Liriano “isn’t just crazy talk.”

One thing is clear: The Twins don’t plan to sign him long term. Last weekend, they avoided arbitration with a one-year, $4.3 million deal. From what I’ve heard, their long-term talks went nowhere, with Liriano’s camp hinting it wanted a three-year, $39 million contract.

First, let’s take a look at Liriano’s demands for a 3/$39M deal. He has two years of arbitration left, so that deal would cover one year of free agency. The second year of arbitration typically is valued at 60% of free market, and the third and final year is typically 80% of free market value. So this three year deal would effectively pay for 2.4 years of Liriano’s free market services, which means Liriano’s agent is placing a year of Liriano’s services on the free agent market at $16.25; now, how good would Liriano have to be to be worth that price? I can’t tell how much a win is going for on the free agent market right now, but it seems like it’s somewhere between $4M/win and $5M/win. At $4M/win, that contract would value Liriano as a 4 WAR pitcher; at $4.5M/win, he’d have to be a 3.6 WAR pitcher; at $5M/win, he’d have to be a 3.25 WAR pitcher.

On the other hand, his $4.3M deal this year is supposed to be 60% of his free market value, which means his current contract values him at just $7.1M, probably taking into account his shaky track record and the fact that he remains a significant injury risk.

Let’s take a gander at said shaky track record — in 2006 he put up 4.1 WAR in a shortened season prior to his injury, and that injury and his slow recovery from it led to 0 WAR in a missed 2007, 1.5 WAR in 2008, and 1.1 WAR in 2009, before he broke out again and posted 6.0 WAR as one of the top pitchers in the league in 2010. And all his predictive statistics indicate that his performance was sustainable and will even improve with better-than-the-worst-luck-in-the-league. If you believe he’s healthy and can remain healthy, Liriano seems like a safe bet to be a 4 WAR pitcher and the contract is a no-brainer. If you think he’s a huge injury risk or that his success in 2006 and 2010 was a fluke and his true talent lies somewhere in the “can’t throw strikes or get anybody out” range that he showed in 2008 and 2009 while his velocity was down, then you probably wouldn’t want to guarantee him any more money or years than you absolutely have to.

The Star Tribune is — at the very least — strongly implying that this is the Twins’ thinking. That the Twins front office is actually down on Liriano and does not want to sign him to an extension. That they are, like some sportswriters and fans, selectively seeing only Liriano’s failures in 2010 and not his dominant outings. That they’re seriously entertaining the idea of trading Liriano for pennies on the dollar.

in his final 20 starts, including the postseason, he didn’t finish the eighth inning once.

That seems like an odd measure of talent. The ability to finish eight innings in a start? In the second half of your first full major league season in your career, after pitching all winter in winter ball and all summer at multiple levels the previous year while recovering from major elbow surgery? I hope that’s not a “stat” that people lend any real credence to.

In his much-hyped showdown with Colorado’s Ubaldo Jimenez, the Rockies batted around in the first inning. The Twins won all five of Liriano’s starts against the White Sox, but his performances were more white-knuckle than dominant.

He had a bad game, and then he won a bunch of games against a division rival during a pennant race, but those don’t count because they were close games.

Then, in Game 1 of the Division Series, Liriano had a 3-0 lead in the sixth inning when the Yankees came back to tie it. Afterward, Liriano was his usual polite self, but it was a huge letdown for the team.

Then he lost a game in the playoffs, and it counts because it was a close game.

Oh, and if you think that “logic” from the Star Tribune (or, worse, the Twins) is inane, here’s some more. This time from Howard Sinker, “analyzing” how the Twins could make a trade work.

The fact that manager Ron Gardenhire has talked about the need for more speed in the middle infield is all well and good. But when you have the chance to replace Alexi Casilla with Michael Young, this is a time when you sacrifice speed and some defense and go for the bat. Casilla would make a fine fifth infielder.

And as Jim Bowden, the former Reds and Nationals GM, said on his XM/Sirius show Wednesday afternoon, the Rangers are in a position where they won’t get 100 percent value for Young.

In a deal with the Twins, that would mean Texas picking up a big chunk of Young’s salary. For the Rangers, it means getting a lefty pitcher who doesn’t have Lee’s credentials, but brings a lot more to them than other options. (Somehow, I don’t think that signing ex-Brewer Dave Bush is viewed as a replacement for Lee.)

Rangers beat writer Evan Grant wrote the other day that “right now, about all you can get (for Young) is a bad contract.” The Rockies had been talking about a Young deal that included second baseman Eric Young Jr.

So Liriano totally blows away anything that’s been discussed — which is why the Rangers have so far dismissed what’s on the table.

So, let me get this straight. The Twins suddenly have an “opportunity” to replace their speed-oriented middle infield with a “bat” in the form of Michael Young. And the Rangers are in the position of having to either eat Young’s ridiculous salary or take a pittance in a trade, or both. That’s why the trade market for Young’s services are ice cold — other teams realize he’s an old man whose contract matches his production so poorly that he’s not worth acquiring even if the Rangers pick up most of his salary. And since the Rangers won’t get full value, and the best offer they’ve received so far is Eric Young Jr — who has never been better than replacement level in his career, with a -0.3 WAR and -0.4 WAR in the last two seasons — the obvious solution is that the Twins should offer Francisco Liriano, their best pitcher, one of their best players?

Sinker is right that Liriano totally blows away anything that’s been discussed in the Young talks thus far. And that’s because if the Twins are offering Liriano to the Rangers, the return should be more like Neftali Feliz + high end prospects, rather than drastically-overpaid-old-guy. Dave Cameron expects that Liriano’s trade value is somewhere between Marcum’s and Garza’s,* and thus should yield someone close to a top prospect but not an absolute-top-shelf prospect. Note in that article that Michael Young isn’t mentioned, because it’s ludicrous to even consider that.

* That’s the Garza 2 trade, when the Rays got all of the Cubs’ top prospects for him. Not the Garza 1 trade when the Twins got a busted prospect for him. Bill Smith just keeps looking better and better, eh?

Oh … and if it’s a good idea to scrap the speed-in-the-middle-infield plan in favor of an infielder who can actually hit, what about the one the Twins gave up, JJ Hardy? He offered elite defense at shortstop — something Young absolutely does not. He offered a bat with some pop in it — something Young absolutely does not. He had an affordable contract — something Young absolutely does not. He yielded a couple of mediocre relief pitchers in a trade — not anything close to the value of Liriano.

I can’t tell what the Star Tribune is doing here. Have they actually heard, from the Twins, that Liriano-for-Young talks have happened, or that the Twins are considering starting such talks? Are they accurately representing the Twins’ views on Liriano? Or are they making this up, speculating for the sake of stirring the hot stove pot, baiting clicks to their website where they automatically refresh the page every 30 seconds to goose their pageviews and falsely inflate their pageview statistics to get a better rate on their advertisements? Have they really become this desperate, now that Phil Mackey and ESPN have rendered them completely useless? Ouch.

Publicly, the Twins keep saying Liriano is a big part of their 2011 plans. They’d love to see him prove the skeptics wrong and blossom into a 20-game winner, even if this leaves fans screaming about their decision not to sign him long term.

When your best hope is that you get embarrassed — and you work to ensure that’ll happen no matter what — then you’re doing something wrong.

What do you think? Are the Twins seriously considering this, or is the Strib just stirring the pot? What do you think is the right thing to do with Liriano — go year to year through arbitration, sign him to a long term extension, or trade him? And what do you think is a reasonable return in trade, or size of contract?

With all this talk about the 2011 season, and the complaints about the offseason spending that makes me wonder if I was imagining the packed Target Field every day in 2010, I feel like things are getting a little too short-sighted and whiny.

Keith Law’s organizational rankings and top 100 prospect lists just came out this week, so let’s take a quick glance at the top guys in the Twins’ system and let a few dreams carry us closer to Spring Training.

Law gives the Twins the 7th-best system in the majors; frankly, that’s higher than I assumed they’d be ranked given what has seemed like a paucity of impact players at the upper and middle levels of the system. But that may have just been a multi-year blip, and the farm system seems to be re-filling.

A sneaky-good system, it’s not loaded with big names but boasts a few impact guys and a ton of depth. This is more than just the Twins’ usual assortment of strike-throwing fourth starters and speedy outfielders, a testament to good drafting and some major investments in the international arena, where they’ve been as aggressive as any club.

He puts five Twins prospects in his Top 100: Aaron Hicks, Miguel Angel Sano/Jean, Kyle Gibson, Ben Revere, and Oswaldo Arcia.

10: Aaron Hicks

A 21 year old switch-hitting outfielder, the Twins have been excited about him since they drafted him out of high school, but have been moving him along slowly.

Hicks took a step forward in 2010 by converting his tools into baseball performance. He’s a true five-tool player, with an 80 arm in the outfield, above-average speed, future plus power and excellent bat speed. He’s much smoother hitting right-handed, with better balance and weight transfer, and it showed this year in his platoon split, as he hit just .248/.383/.339 against right-handers even though he was repeating the level.

His plate discipline continues to improve, and there’s plenty of leverage in there for power when he fills out, but the inability to hit right-handed pitching is a major concern that will have to be addressed, perhaps by having him give up switch-hitting if it doesn’t improve. On tools alone, Hicks is a top-5 prospect in the game, and I still expect him to become a star, but there’s some risk here and I can understand why the Twins are taking it a little slow with him.

The worst thing the Twins could do with Hicks would be to rush him before he’s ready. At worst, he develops inescapable bad habits and is ruined for good — as Carlos Gomez was. At best, he successfully adapts at the major league level, and finally hits his stride in time to get expensive in arbitration and then leave as a free agent — as in the final hope for Delmon Young.

29: Miguel Angel Sano/Jean

The Twins signed him as a 16 year old out of the Dominican Republic — other teams were scared off by the fact that his age could not be verified and he’s a little bit too big and strong to realistically be that young.

Sano won’t turn 18 until May, but his hitting tools would make him a top-five pick if he were just coming out of an American high school, with consideration for the top overall spot. He’s a natural hitter, with very good balance and plus bat speed, and there will be power not too far down the road because he gets great leverage from his lower half.

He has started to fill out quickly and is big enough that there’s zero chance he remains at shortstop. And despite a 70 or better arm, there’s a rapidly declining chance he sticks at third base, because he easily could end up at 240 pounds or more by the time he’s in his mid-20s. He is a below-average runner but is agile enough that he’ll work out somewhere in the field, perhaps right field because of his arm strength, and his bat will profile anywhere he plays, with average and potentially big-time power.

It’s way too early to say what kind of a player Sano/Jean will turn out to be. He could get fat and become useless, like Dayan Viciedo did for the White Sox. He could get fat and become marginal, like Pablo Sandoval did for the Giants. Or he could stay in shape and develop his bat, and in a few years we could be talking about him as the next Jason Heyward. There’s a huge, exciting range of possibilities here.

But the best thing about Sano/Jean, in my mind, is that he seems to mark the start of a trend — one continued by the aggressive pursuit and signing of Nishioka — of targeting and acquiring top international talent. This is currently the best way to spend money, and the Twins are doing it.

32: Kyle Gibson

Gibson had a fracture in his forearm in college that hurt his draft status; he was supposed to be a top-10, maybe top-5, draft pick but slipped all the way to the Twins. The injury was supposedly not caused by pitching, didn’t indicate a problem with his delivery, and the doctors claimed he should fully recover. That appears to have happened, because Gibson has been dynamite on the mound and is close to major-league ready.

Gibson is not the exciting top-of-the-rotation type of arm that most pitchers this high on the list represent, but he is extremely high-probability and could pitch above the level of his stuff because of his command and feel. He will show three solid-average pitches most nights and pounds the strike zone with all three. His fastball tops out at 94 mph or so, but his slider flashes above average and he can get ground balls with both pitches, keeping the ball out of the air on 57 percent of balls he allowed in play in 2010.

Gibson is tall and still looks like he could pack some weight on his shoulders, perhaps adding a mile an hour or two to the fastball, and his arm action is easy and repeatable, which probably explains a lot of his above-average command and control. He is a midrotation starter with a No. 2 ceiling but is so close to major league-ready that he should get the call in 2011 and could have an effect down the stretch.

Another reason for Nick Blackburn to look over his shoulder? The worst thing about Gibson is that he’s going to make that Blackburn contract look foolish even sooner. Not Gibson’s fault.

71: Ben Revere

A surprise first-round pick — at the time, most teams had him going in the second or third round — Revere has both proven the Twins right to be interested in him and been somewhat disappointing as a prospect. I think he represents the epitome of the organization’s love of slap-hitting speedsters.

Revere is a major league-ready center fielder with a chance to hit for average and add value through baserunning, despite having two below-average tools.

Revere is a 70-80 runner who covers a ton of ground in center through his speed, and his reads have improved substantially over the three-plus years he’s been in the Twins’ organization. He still has a well below-average arm that will probably require middle infielders to head into short center for cutoff throws, but the added range Revere provides should compensate. At the plate, Revere’s swing is as short as it gets, slappy and flat, and the way he meets the ball out front means he won’t have power, but he has good hand-eye coordination and will make enough contact to have value as a hitter.

I don’t see Revere as a star, but that kind of defense makes him a valuable regular.

After seeing him “play,” I’m a little down on Revere. I disagree with Law about his defense — he takes routes to fly balls at least as bad as Gomez did, can barely make up for it with his speed, and can barely make the throw back to the infield. His upside seems to me like it’s a poor-man’s Juan Pierre. So if the Twins can find some team that’s into that, I’d love to see what they could get in a trade for Revere, who has the pedigree of a top prospect.

74: Oswaldo Arcia

A 19 year old outfielder, I hadn’t heard of this guy until early in the 2010 season when he was absolutely destroying every pitch he saw. Seriously, he batted .375/.424/.672 in 2010, with 21 doubles, 7 triples, and 14 homers in just 283 plate appearances. He’s been splitting his time between CF and RF, and hasn’t made an error in two years (for what that’s worth).

Talk about a guy coming out of nowhere. Arcia screwed up one of his knees in an on-field collision and missed a chunk of the 2009 season, but tore apart the Appalachian League this past year and has jumped onto the pro scouting radar.

Arcia has a very classic left-handed swing and nearly mimics it from the right side, although he did most of his damage (.398/.455/.760) hitting left-handed. The raw power is enormous, again better left-handed, where it’s to all fields. He’s a 55-60 runner who won the Twins over by improving his conditioning while rehabbing the knee, and he has a plus arm to let him stay in right field once he outgrows center.

The Twins have developed a lot of players in recent years, but not many with this kind of raw power and overall ceiling.

Obviously he’s a long way away, but if he does in 2011 what he did in 2010, he’ll be one of the top prospects in the game and, along with Aaron Hicks, will give the Twins a future outfield to drool over.

And that’s the end of our trip through the cream of the farm’s crop. I am a little surprised that Tsuyoshi Nishioka didn’t make the cut — I wonder if that’s because Law doesn’t consider him a prospect since he’s never played in the minor leagues or because he’s not nearly as young as the other guys, or if it’s because he is considered a prospect and Law simply doesn’t think he’s one of the 100 best.

I would think Nishioka would be ranked somewhere between Gibson and Revere if he were to be included in the list, which leaves the Twins in a pretty strong position — bear in mind, though, that I’m foolishly excited about Nishioka.

Sometimes it’s fun to eagerly await the future, rather than be bogged down by the crushing reality of the present. Who knows what the team will look like when Sano/Jean, Hicks, and Arcia ascend — but if a few things break right and their development continues as we hope it will, it could restock the Twins’ core of stars just in time.

And it’s worth pointing out that all of these guys are pretty new to the system — if the front office can continue to add potential stars to the minor leagues at the same rate they have been for the last couple of years, through drafting and (especially) international signings, then the Twins will continue to be mentioned as one of the models of how an organization should be run.

Last year, Rob Delaney pitched 80 innings at AAA, and struck out 92 batters. His 10.4 K/9 ratio ranks among the best in the entire Twins system. His 2.6 BB/9 ratio is excellent given that high strikeout rate. But he gave up too many hits, at a 9.2 H/9 rate, and it drove his ERA to 4.72; while I’ve watched Delaney and been excited by his 4.93 K/BB ratio in the minors, and his ability to regularly top 10 K/9 (he’s done that at every level of the minors), the Twins have apparently been turned off by … something. Maybe it’s his ERA, or his win-loss record, or maybe they see something in his delivery and don’t think he’s for real.

They finally called him up to the majors, and they let him pitch one inning. He didn’t do well: 1 inning, 2 hits, 1 homer, 1 run, 1 walk, 0 strikeouts. Obviously, that sample size is as small as it gets, and I wouldn’t consider it wise to make a decision based on a single inning.

The Twins, though, designated Delaney for assignment yesterday, to make room on the 40-man roster. It’s possible — but I personally think it’s unlikely — that Delaney will pass through waivers and remain with the organization. The Twins had to be willing to risk losing Delaney in order to acquire the guy they did, so ideally it’d be worth that risk.

Dusty Hughes spent 2010 in Kansas City, earning the major league minimum. I suppose that’s the generous way to describe his contribution to the Royals. He pitched 56 innings, with 5.4 K/9, 3.8 BB/9, and 9.4 H/9; that all added up to an unsustainably non-descript 3.83 ERA.

In his final year at AAA, his numbers were little better. 81 innings, 7.8 K/9, 4.2 BB/9, 8.1 H/9, and a 3.50 ERA. His career K/BB ratio in the minor leagues is 2 K/BB, but that’s trended steadily downward as he’s ascended through the ranks, bottoming at 1.7 K/BB in his two years at AAA — still better than the 1.42 K/BB he had in the majors in 2010.

Here’s what Rany Jazayerli had to say about Dusty Hughes in his Royals Report Card:

Probably the easiest grade on the entire roster. Everything about Dusty Hughes deserves a C grade, starting with the fact that he somehow spent the entire season on the roster without really making an impression on anyone.

He pitched in 57 games for the Royals, but judging from the way they used him, you’d think the only reason he was on the roster was because the Royals were too embarrassed to go without a lefty somewhere in their bullpen, and, well, Hughes was just standing there, so…

He wasn’t used in high-leverage situations at all; just eight times in those 57 games did he pitch in a situation where his “Leverage Index” was 2 or more, and just twice after the All-Star Break. He was kinda used as a lefty specialist, but not really – he faced right-handed batters 54% of the time. He was kinda effective against left-handed hitters, but not really – they batted .260/.351/.323 against him.

Hughes wasn’t bad, not really – he gave up a ton of baserunners (88 in just 56 innings), but minimized the damage by allowing just three homers. But he wasn’t good either. He wasn’t really anything. He was just there.

More power to him that he earned a full year’s worth of a major-league salary, and got a big contribution to his pension. But unless he takes a significant step forward – the easiest path being that he starts throwing more strikes – his job security is almost non-existent. I don’t know what Dusty Hughes really does for the Royals.

This is a particularly non-exciting move.

There are two things about Dusty Hughes that are the least bit interesting: he has an arm, and it’s on the left side of his body.

While the Twins are currently desperate for bullpen arms, it’d be tough to find one more mediocre than this. Plus, they have Glen Perkins available as a lefty out of the pen; I know they don’t like him, but is the plan to have him rot in AAA forever? Is he worse than Dusty Hughes? They also have Brian Duensing, who is fighting for a spot in the rotation but may ultimately find his best success in the bullpen. Is Hughes good enough to mix into the bullpen with Jose Mijares and Duensing? Is it more important to have three bullpen lefties, or to have as many talented arms as possible?

And that’s what I have against the move; the only real complaint about it besides “this is pointless.”

In their effort to bolster their collection of relievers, they risked losing a potentially-talented right handed reliever who could have helped them this year. In return, they got a decidedly-not-talented left handed reliever who could conceivably help them this year — if by “help” you mean “turn a two run deficit into a four run deficit thirty or forty times.” He certainly shouldn’t pitch in close games; even the Royals knew that.

Will Dusty Hughes make the 25 man roster? Probably not. And if Delaney passes through waivers, this move will be promptly forgotten.

But … I just don’t see the point of doing it in the first place.

There are a few reasons to be concerned about giving Carl Pavano a multi-year contract — among them his age, injury history, and low rate of striking people out — but this article over at Fangraphs makes me wonder if there’s hope that Pavano could reverse his recent trend toward contact inducement. The article points out that while Pavano’s strikeout rate is dangerously low and getting lower, the decline in strikeouts was met by a corresponding jump in groundballs.

Almost across the board his pitches have higher GB% and lower whiff (swinging-strike) rates. The only exception is his four-seam fastball had slightly higher whiffs in 2010. Swinging strikes and ground balls generally trade off, but it is interesting to see to play out so clearly for one player from year to year.

The difference is the most striking with Pavano’s slider which went from 37.5% GBs in 2009 to 59.2% in 2010, accompanied by a decrease in whiff rate (per pitch) from 12% to 10%. It looks to me that this was caused by location in the strike zone.

One of the tenets of modern baseball analysis is that pitchers have very little control over balls in play — that’s why most people were so sure that Pavano’s 5.10 ERA in 2009 would drop significantly once his .329 BABIP dropped. Sure enough, in 2010 his BABIP was only .281 and his ERA went down to 3.75 despite shockingly identical FIP (4.00 vs 4.02) and xFIP (3.96 vs 4.01).

My question is, was his improvement from 2009 to 2010 merely a coincidence, or did he have some control over the decline in BABIP? Chiefly, he knew coming into 2010 that he’d have a significantly improved infield defense behind him, with Orlando Hudson and JJ Hardy manning the middle infield. Did Pavano consciously trade swings-and-misses for weak-contact-inducement?

As with most of my musing, there’s no way to know Pavano’s intentions. But there are a few ways to look at the Pavano prism moving forward. One way is to assume that he didn’t actively try to shape his K/9 vs GB%, that his skills are declining as he ages, and he was fortunate enough to run into a 50-point drop in BABIP that made people think he’s a top-of-the-rotation workhorse. If that’s what you think, you’re probably terrified about what’s going to happen to him as the middle infield behind him switches from the excellent Hardy/Hudson combo to the giant question mark that is Casilla/Nishioka.

On the other hand, if you think he tried to trade strikeouts for ground balls in 2010, then presumably you think he could reverse that trend in 2011 if he saw a need to. And given that giant question mark behind him in the infield, maybe he’ll see a need to trade ground balls back into strikeouts.

The important thing for the Twins is that Pavano stays healthy enough to throw 200 innings at a Scott-Baker-like 4.00 FIP/xFIP. How he gets there isn’t crucial to the bottom line, but I think it could be an interesting thing to watch.

So as the 2011 season progresses, I’ll be watching Pavano’s BABIP but perhaps even more tellingly, his K/9 and GB%. If his K/9 stays around 4 and his GB% stays above 50%, then he hasn’t been able to adjust back to his previous ways (whether he tried to or not).

Tell me in the comments, what are your thoughts? Do you think Pavano tried to make the strikeouts-for-grounders trade? Would such a trade be possible? Was it a good idea in 2010, and would it be a good idea to trade back in 2011?

Since arriving in 2004, even more than his on-the-field production, Nick Punto’s main contribution to the team and its fans has been that he has represented the Minnesota Twins to the world.

When I say represented, I mean it in a good way, I think. Nick Punto has embodied the Twins’ Platonic ideal of what a position player should be; high-effort, high-hustle, defensive-minded, versatile, singles hitter who values a high batting average at the expense of walks and extra base hits. Nick Punto has also been a metaphor for the team’s success over the past several years; outmatched on paper by superior teams with higher payrolls, with virtues that seem to exist but can’t (yet?) be quantified, but somehow competitive year in and year out.

I’ve given Punto more than his fair share of grief over the years. My thinking had been along the lines of what a utility player like Punto is worth to a team — for a good team with a high payroll and many good players and the expectation of contending, a good utility guy is worth a lot more than he would be to a team with a low payroll and a smaller collection of good players. If Punto is the fifth-most important player on your team, then you have a bad team; if Punto is the tenth-most important player, then you have a good team.

And I always thought that the Twins could have spent Punto’s salary better in other places, when they had smaller payrolls and dollars were scarce. Now that the team has more revenue and a higher payroll, I naturally assumed that bringing back Punto was essentially a no-brainer. Not only could the team clearly afford it, but he has fans among his teammates and the coaching staff and the media and the fanbase. Joe Christensen points out that that assumption appears to be faulty:

Punto is still a free agent, but from all indications, the Twins won’t be bringing him back.

What?

There are a few options, as I see it, to explain what the Twins may be thinking.

• Nick Punto is over the hill, and/or his performance will drop below what they have come to expect from him
• The performance gap between Punto and Tolbert will be smaller than the salary gap, and they’re making a value play
• They simply can’t afford it
• They disagree with my premise that a utility player is more valuable to a high-payroll team and don’t think they need him any more
• They are signalling that they are adjusting their vision of the ideal ballplayer — throwing out the mold, if you will

The Twins would have you believe that the issue is money, and they cannot afford Punto’s services:

With a projected Opening Day payroll of $113 million, they insist they have reached their limit. Insiders say Carl Pavano’s contract actually pushed them over budget, requiring special approval from CEO Jim Pohlad.

On the other hand, Christensen asserts that “even if it meant taking a sizeable pay cut, Punto would be thrilled to return,” though he doesn’t provide a source. Maybe Punto told him as much directly, and maybe he didn’t. The sizeable paycut angle, I think, bashes a crowbar against the kneecaps of both the performance/salary gap theory and the overall can’t-afford-it theory, regardless of what ownership claims about how broke they are.* If they wanted Punto and could get him at a significant paycut from $4M, they’d do it.

* Am I falling into the trap of thinking that now that Target Field is open, the Twins have virtually unlimited funds? I haven’t seen their revenue numbers, but they’ve stated that team payroll will remain pegged to 52% of revenue as it was when they played in the Metrodome. Maybe it really is true that $110M or so is the payroll limit, and they’ve gone above it. I don’t think I believe that, but it’s certainly possible.

That leaves the theories that involve the Twins no longer wanting Punto around.

So, which is it? Is Punto over the hill, and the Twins don’t think he’s good any more? Do they not think they need a solid utility man, and can get by with a lesser one? Or have they changed their idea of the quintessential Twin, and are moving in a different direction?

I don’t think it’s possible to know that. Bill Smith certainly isn’t going to come out and explain it for us.

Regardless of the reasons, though, if Nick Punto doesn’t return to the Twins it sure feels like the end of an era.

Well, that is a loaded question.  For three years it isn’t, but foxsports.com’s Ken Rosenthal is reporting the Twins are closing in on a two year deal. I am actually OK with this.  Without Pavano the rotation looks like Liriano-Baker-Duensing-Blackburn-Slowey.  Next on the depth chart is probably Manship.  Those top 5 are injury or badness-prone. Adding depth is almost necessary, whether or not it is Pavano is up for debate, but any Twins fan who is totally comfortable with that top 5 has some serious issues. I don’t think Pavano can repeat his 2010, but if we can get anything close, I say go for it.  I’d hate for them to sit on the money saved on Hardy, and if they pull the trigger on this it looks like they won’t.

Do you want the Twins to keep Pavano, even if it takes a multi-year deal? If not, what should the money be spent on? Bullpen help? A different starting pitcher? Should the front office use this apparent lack of depth to give Kyle Gibson a shot? What say you?

There’s been a lot of talk about bullpens, and how to build them. The general consensus seems to be that signing relief pitchers to expensive multi-year contracts is a bad idea: Dave Cameron points out that the setup men who have signed 3+ year deals since 2006 have combined for +0.1 WAR, which is not what their teams wanted when they signed them.

And so, while the loss of Jesse Crain to the White Sox and Matt Guerrier to the Dodgers has gutted the Twins’ bullpen and generated much trepidation among fans, both of them got three year deals and it was probably wise for the Twins not to match their salary offers even if they could have afforded it.

But if you’re not acquiring relievers on the free agent market once they’ve demonstrated success at the major league level, where do they come from? I would think the cheapest, highest-value way to go is to generate them internally, and the Twins have certainly tried that, rolling out Jeff Manship, Alex Burnett, Pat Neshek, Anthony Slama, Rob Delaney, and other home-grown relievers. Of course, none of them looked very good in 2010, and the Twins may not want to trust them as the core of the bullpen in 2011.

The only other options, then, are grasping at castaways from other teams, guys that other teams have tried before and didn’t like what they saw — that’s how the Twins got Matt Guerrier, so it’s possible to find good pitchers in this pool. But it’s also where they got Randy Flores and myriad other nobodies; there’s just as much uncertainty here as there is in the home-grown group, perhaps even more.

Finally, you can make trades to bolster your relief corps. That seems to be the direction the Twins are going, as they reject the high price tags on free agent relievers.

Relievers the Twins have recently acquired:

• Chuck James, minor league deal. From the Braves. Had rotator cuff surgery in 2008.
• Paul Bargas, traded from the Rockies for Jose Morales.
• Brett Jacobson, traded from the Orioles for Hardy/Harris.
• Jim Hoey, traded from the Orioles for Hardy/Harris.
• Brian Fuentes, traded from the Angels for Loek Van Mil.
• Randy Flores, picked up off waivers.
• Matt Capps, traded from the Nationals for Wilson Ramos.
• Clay Condrey, minor league deal.
• Chris Province, traded from the Red Sox for Boof Bonser.
• Ron Mahay, traded from the Royals.
• Jon Rauch, traded from the Diamondbacks for Kevin Mulvey.

That’s 8 relievers acquired in trade, 3 castaways picked up off waivers or on a minor league contract, and 0 free agents.

What strikes me is the disparity in the cost of these relievers, on the trade market. Rauch is a serviceable arm, and Kevin Mulvey … isn’t much to give up. Chris Province may be nobody, but Boof Bonser had absolutely no value by the time the Twins let him go. Brian Fuentes is a good pitcher, certainly has value in the late innings, and Loek Van Mil’s shot at ever making it to the big leagues is a pretty tall order.

On the other cheek, though, are the guys who required legitimate players to acquire. Capps is overrated by his save totals and was only a half-season removed from a 5.80 ERA, and he netted top catching prospect Wilson Ramos. Paul Bargas is an interesting choice, but he’s only 21 years old and in Single-A; the Twins gave up a pretty good backup catcher in Jose Morales. Jacobson/Hoey are giant question marks: Jacobson is 23 years old and still down in Single-A, Hoey has put up big strikeout numbers in the minors that didn’t translate into the majors even before his arm exploded. And the Twins had to surrender above-average shortstop JJ Hardy in order to get them.

This analysis, however, has ignored the effect of money on trade valuations. The Twins took on Rauch’s salary from the Diamondbacks, so they didn’t have to give up much in terms of players. The same is true of Brian Fuentes, who was virtually free when it came to prospects because the Angels were looking to cut a couple of millions dollars off their books and the Twins were deafened by the sound of cash registers ringing in the first year of Target Field.

Meanwhile, the Twins were able to cut about $8M off their payroll by throwing Hardy & Harris to the winds, and that drastically reduced what they could expect in return. Still, Hardy is currently projected to be worth around $12M in 2011, so the Twins sent as much as $4M in surplus value to the Orioles — that value will come back only if either Hoey or Jacobson turns into a solid bullpen option at some point, which is possible but unlikely.

Capps was in the middle of a $3.5M contract when the Twins traded for him, and the Nationals sent $0.5M along as part of the deal. So he probably cost the Twins between $1.5M and $2M, and with the focus on all those saves and desperation sinking in as Rauch struggled, that probably seemed like it was far less than he was worth. The illusion of a huge amount of surplus value is probably what helped drive the prospect-cost up, but even at the time there was no conceivable way for Capps to produce enough value in half a season as to be worth losing a valuable prospect like Wilson Ramos.

When I started this, I thought I’d conclude that the cost of relievers in the trade market was rising rapidly, to match the inflated cost of relievers on the free agent market. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though. The Capps trade was a bad move, and while Hardy brought back an underwhelming haul that was because that was effectively a salary dump.* Beyond that, these trades have not been expensive in terms of players.

* In the end, I think that’s what bothers me most about the Hardy trade. In just a few short months, the Twins’ attitude transformed from “sure, we’ll take on Fuentes’ salary … did you know this money was printed on trees?” to “we can’t afford any free agents, we can’t afford to keep our own players, and we need to save money by dumping the guy we were all excited about last winter.” The payroll ballooned quickly, but in the scheme of things it didn’t take long for the Twins to return to the tepid, penny-pinching days of old. Trading for Hardy in the first place was representative of the expanding budget, and trading him away is representative of the wallet suddenly slamming shut.

With the departure of most of the bullpen this offseason, Bill Smith set his focus on rebuilding a relief corps. He’s made a series of small moves to inject talented arms into the mix, putting the team in position to hope that at least a few of them pan out; that’s really all you can do with relievers anyway, and Smith has wisely decided that it’s better to give guaranteed dollars to players who can give you more predictable performance.

We here at hitting the foul pole have been pretty busy lately, that is why we haven’t posted in over a month.  Obviously a lot has gone on since Thanksgiving.  The team successfully bid on, and signed infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka, traded JJ Hardy for two minor league relief pitchers, let Jesse Crain and Matt Guerrier leave to sign 3 year contracts, we picked up someone named Scott Diamond in the Rule V draft,  and Carl Pavano is still on the market. Oh, and Joe Mauer had minor knee surgery.

I still find myself upset at the Hardy trade.  When healthy, he was one of the top shorstops in the AL (if not all of Major League Baseball), so he deservedly was due a raise.  All estimates I have seen were that he would be bumped up to the 7-8 million dollar range.  According to Fangraphs he was worth 9.5 million, ais projected to be worth 12.8 next season.  I’m not math whiz, but if we can get12.8 million for 7 or 8, that is a pretty good deal.  Color me confused.

So not only did we trade an excellent SS, we let Hudson walk.  I have no problem with that move, but by getting rid of both middle infielders and replacing them with two giant question marks in Nishioka and Casilla seems the Twins are taking an unneccessary risk.  My guess is Bill Smith and co will use this money to attempt to retain Pavano. Which apparently will require three years.

MISTAKE!!!

In what universe is giving a pitcher with an extensive injury history on the wrong side of 30, a good idea? Oh, and coming off a career year?  Does anyone really think Pavano can repeat 2010 once, let alone thrice?

The Hardy trade did net us two relief pitchers, one of which might be able to contribute in 2011.  The bullpen is a freaking disaster right now, so I guess any help will come in handy. There are definitely some internal candidates such as Delaney, Slama, Burnett, and Manship, and bounceback years from Nathan and Neshek would be welcome surprises. Re-signing Jon Rauch is also an option if the price is right, but for someone who had 20+ saves last year it won’t be. What I’m trying to say, is the bullpen could be OK if everything swings our way, which obviously won’t happen.  I’m not saying we should have handed three year contracts to Crain and/or Guerrier, but it is unfortunate that they both became prized free agents at the same time.

According to my twitter feed, I’m not the only one who has been discouraged by the offseason moves so far.  Let’s hope once the calendar turns to 2011, Bill Smith and his brain trust make some moves to solidify the relief corps, and add depth to the bench.

There have recently been several reports that Japanese infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka will be posted by his current team, the Chiba Lotta Marines, and that the Twins are expected to bid on him.

Posting Process

The path Japanese players have to take to make it over the Pacific can be confusing. While a Japanese team controls a player’s rights, they have the option of “posting” him, once he’s amassed a certain amount of playing time. (That’s why Japanese stars don’t make it over to the MLB until they’re no longer young.) If the player’s contract runs out, he can simply enter MLB free agency and sign with whatever team he wants — the posting process allows the Japanese team to get money back for a departing player,* and allows the MLB team to negotiate exclusively with the player without having to worry about competition. And yes, that does seem like a very pro-franchise arrangement, which basically screws the Japanese players.

* It’s not like they can get draft pick compensation when they lose a star player, like MLB teams can.

The MLB team with the winning bid gets the right to negotiate exclusively with the player. No other MLB team can sign him, or even make an offer. If the player signs a contract, then the MLB team pays the amount of their winning bid to the Japanese team; if the player does not sign, then no money changes hands between teams and the player stays with his Japanese team.

So the question is: who is Tsuyoshi Nishioka, how much should the Twins bid for him, and what kind of contract should he expect to sign?

Tsuyoshi Nishioka

Listed at 5’11″ and 176 pounds, Nishioka is big for a Japanese middle infielder, but not compared to MLB infielders — JJ Hardy, for example, is 6’2″ and 200 pounds.

Nishioka is naturally right handed, and after hitting left handed as an amateur he became a switch hitter upon becoming a professional. He primarily plays shortstop, where his range, apparently, ranks among the Japanese elite; he also has quick reflexes, soft hands, and a strong throwing arm that combine to make him a tantalizing prospect.

In his career, Nishioka has batted .293/.364/.426 in 3111 AB through age 25, including a .346/.423/.482 line in 2010 that won him his first batting title. In addition to leading the league this year in batting average, he also led in games played (144), runs scored (121), hits (206), and total bases (287). Leading the league in games played is promising, since prior to 2010 he’d developed a reputation as injury-prone.

In his younger days he was a speedster, leading the league with 41 steals at age 20 and 33 at age 21, but since then his stolen base totals have dropped into the 20′s as his homers have jumped from 3-4 per season up to 11-14 per season.

I don’t know how to make the translation between the NPB and MLB, but I’ve read elsewhere that Japanese baseball is similar to AAA, maybe a little better. Perhaps Nishioka could be expected to hit between .280 and .310, with moderate pop, good speed, and an OBP around .340 to .360 with an SLG around .400, which would make him an excellent offensive shortstop, to go along with elite defense. At just 26 years old, Nishioka could be a pretty valuable commodity.

Contract

Nishioka seems like he has the potential to be an elite major league player — Yahoo Sports asks if he’s the next Ichiro — and would fill an important spot in the middle of the infield and the top of the lineup, as well as inject some much-needed speed into the Twins’ offense.

I don’t have a great nose for how teams value players these days, so take this estimate with a grain of salt. But Nishioka seems like he could easily be a 3+ WAR player. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the winning bid exceed $15M, even $20M, and the value of his contract could exceed the posting fee.

Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

Will the Twins end up getting Tsuyoshi Nishioka? Probably not. There are too many variables, and it would probably cost too much for a team that, despite jumping up into the large-payroll stratosphere, has serious payroll considerations this year.

Nishioka has stated he’d prefer to play on the West Coast — that doesn’t matter in the posting process, but could make it more difficult to agree to a contract if the Twins win the bidding. Plus, the Red Sox are expected to bid too, and in addition to their deeper pockets, they also have the necessary Japanese translation infrastructure that the Twins lack.

But it’s exciting to see the Twins in on a potentially impactful young star from around the globe. And it sure would be fun to be able to root for a guy who looks like he popped right out of an old Japanese video game.

And if you really want to like the guy, watch this commercial.