This excellent article comes by way of Dan Wade, a great friend of TwinsFix and a columnist for Bleacher Report. Many thanks to him for lending us his words!
Bill Smith
Minnesota Twins fans are as patient a fan base as there is in baseball. Sure, other fans have suffered through longer droughts (The Royals) or fire sales (The Marlins). Few franchises, regardless of sport, however, have had to deal with the Minnesota Twins’ infuriating impulse to stand pat.
This is no new phenomenon. Even when the Twins were in danger of losing 100 games in the late 1990s, fans were promised a bright and glorious future…someday. That day came in 2002, when the Twins long-awaited young stars led the team to the playoffs. Since then, the Twins have won the division four times, yet have never made it further than the ALCS, and have only done so once.
Over the same time period, the Twins have attracted exactly zero big time free agents. Agents like Scott Boras are considered persona non grata as far as the Twins are concerned; they’ve had just one of his clients, Kyle Lohse, since 2000.
Players like Adrian Beltre go out of their way to avoid the Twins, despite the fact the Twins have yet to finish less than third and have more division titles than the Cubs and Mets and the same number as the Angels since they reemerged as a true contender in 2002.
This has been a slow offseason for everyone outside of New York, but the Twins have been especially quiet even by their standards. It has gotten to the point where even the supposedly even-keeled beat reporters are calling for something to be done.
The Twins had the 25th lowest payroll in baseball last year, aren’t adding much to it this year, and will soon get the revenue boost associated with opening a new stadium, so money shouldn’t be the object. Even the notoriously Scrooge-like (and possibly undead) Carl Pohlad can open his wallet wider than this.
Nor should the issue be talent. The Twins have five young pitchers, the eldest of whom is still just 27, with space pieces like Boof Bonser who may still have trade value, just lying around. They have former uber-prospect Delmon Young, whose poor season last year certainly hurt his value, but didn’t destroy it. The parts to make a deal are there, so why not do it?
First: The Twins are committed to value.
Casey Blake was on the Twins radar from the moment the Phillies lifted the World Series trophy, so what went wrong? The Twins refused to pay more than what they believed to be fair market value for the aging third baseman, and would not add an extra year onto the deal.
The Dodgers, ever willing to overcommit, gave Blake the years he wanted at a price he could live with and with that, the Twins best hope for a relevant signing went by the way.
This applies to trades as well. The Twins could easily have had Adrian Beltre, Garrett Atkins, or any other third baseman not named A-rod by now, if they were willing to compromise. However, dealing Kevin Slowey and Denard Span to patch a hole makes almost no sense. Neither Beltre nor Atkins will be such an upgrade that it would be worth trading two young starters, both of whom were critically influential during the Twins race for the playoffs last year.
Nick Punto
This is the primary reason for the signing of Nick Punto. Punto is slightly above average overall, below average at the plate but with a stellar glove, and provides the veteran presence the Twins seem to cherish.
So, rather than pay exorbitant prices for someone like Rafael Furcal, the Twins were willing to sacrifice comparatively little quality for a larger savings.
In hard economic terms, they felt that the marginal benefit of upgrading to Furcal was much lower than the marginal cost. This makes perfect sense if the money is then reallocated to signing, say, Orlando Hudson. What is eating Twins fans alive is that money that isn’t spent in one place seems to disappear back into the vault from whence it came.
Second: The Twins are committed to organizational development
Whereas big name free agents avoid the Twins like most guys avoid their exes, minor leaguers love the Twins.
Every year, someone unexpectedly breaks camp with the Twins or gets a call up early in the season and gets a real chance to make their mark with the team. This is part of the reason why the Twins zealously protect their younger players from other teams: They believe that each player above A-ball could make a substantial impact in the near future.
For younger players, this means that hard work and solid production may well be rewarded with a September call-up, and generally produces a great amount of loyalty in young players. Rarely, if ever, do the Twins’ minor leaguers chirp to the media about being mistreated or undervalued. Matt Garza was one of the only players to ever voice such concerns, and his tenure with the Twins was surprisingly short.
Nationals’ GM Jim Bowden famously asked for Garza and Scott Baker as the starting price for the rental of Alfonso Soriano at the 2006 trade deadline, which would have been ridiculous for any team, but Bowden would have been better off asking for the Metrodome and the deed to the Mall of America. Dealing young pitching is simply off the table about 99 percent of the time.
When they do decide to sell, as they did with Matt Garza, the young talent generally goes one at a time and with a chance of a huge return.
Conclusion (for now): The Twins key operating concepts make them fundamentally ill-suited to compete in the current fee agent climate, and to a lesser extent, make them poor trade partners.
When Terry Ryan was the GM, no one wanted to trade with the Twins for fear of becoming the next Brian Sabean, whom Ryan fleeced in the Liriano/Nathan/Bonser for Pierzynski. His successor, Bill Smith, was more active last year, but that will almost certainly be an aberration rather than the norm.
Smith has the same love for young talent that Ryan did, and the same compulsion to keep them happy, which will inhibit his ability to trade potential for big name players the way the Mets did for Johan Santana.
The need to see real value in their players proportional to their contracts will hamstring the Twins free agent dealings for as long as that policy remains in place. None of the major free agents are worth anywhere near what they received, and that’s why the Twins won’t pay to play.
Put another way:
Is CC Sabathia really good? Yes.
Would I want him on my team? Yes, no question.
Is he worth between 10-20 million dollars per year more than, say, Scott Baker? Not a chance.
So, given these limitations, are the Twins simply on a long, slow march to insignificance, punctuated only by brief glimmers of hope when a young player miraculously comes through? Hardly.
In part two, I’ll show why the Twins organizational philosophy, with a few tweaks, is the foundation for a World Series caliber team in the near future.
7 Responses to “Explaining the Minnesota Mentality: Part One”
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December 24th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
First of all, the Twins could have acquired players via trade by giving up less than “Slowey and Span.” I don’t believe that Atkins rumor period, but even if the Rockies did ask for that at one point, there is no indication other clubs made unreasonable demands.
Second, your notion of “value” is invalid as a matter of common sense. If a player has 3 offers for $30 million, then that means his value is $30 million. The Twins can declare his value to be $20 million, like I could claim that Pohlad should sell me the Twins for $1,000.
Players are “worth” what clubs will pay them. When the Twins refuse to pay, while making tens of millions of dollars in profit (they will turn a profit this year even with an attendance of zero, thanks to revenue sharing and broadcast money), that’s one thing: cheap. That’s what the Twins are: CHEAP.
Being a diehard fan means rooting for the team no matter what. It doesn’t mean making excuses for billionares and the front office.
December 24th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
ONE team offered Blake a three year deal, not THREE.
December 24th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
In my defense, this is part one of what will likely be a three part series on the so-called (by me) Minnesota Mentality, so don’t think I’m making excuses for the FO. Parts two and three should clear up what I mean, but I needed to lay ground work with this one.
To the Atkins rumor, Dan O’dowd is a Jim Bowden disciple: big on toolsy outfielders and completely stable blind. Both GMs grossly overvalue their own players and disdain other teams’ talent. As such, that rumor didn’t surprise me even a bit, especially since there is no clear consensus about Span’s staying power around the league. He faded toward the end of the year and has yet to establish any sort of track record.
I’m sure O’dowd looks at Slowey as a front line starter and Span as a acceptable throw-in. Twins fans see it differently, obviously, as does Bill Smith and that’s why no deal was ever even close to being done. The Twins, too, tend to overvalue their own talent, though not as badly.
As to objective/subjective notions of value, I’ve got a hunch we’re going to have to agree to disagree here, but I’ll try to better illustrate what I mean. There is no true average or replacement level pitcher, but there are guys who are close. Assuming then, that all “Average” pitchers are equal (yes, I know they aren’t perfectly, but like assuming Rational Actors, if you can’t make some baseline assumptions about the people involved it all goes to hell), we can assign each of those pitchers a rating of 0. They don’t hurt their team (they aren’t Juan Rincon) but they don’t do as much good as they should be doing.
Assuming, then, that every average pitcher hit the free agent market at the same time, they should receive equivalent contracts, they are, afterall, more or less equal. For the sake of clarity, we’ll call that value X. As the skill level of the pitcher rises, so too will his likely contract, and each raise is a marginal raise.
A pitcher of skill level 3, for example, may command a contact of X+5, affected by issues such as rarity (is he a knuckleballer) or market strength. What I’m saying the Twins do is attempt to find players of high marginal skill with low marginal cost. THAT is what I’m calling value. Some teams don’t care about adding extra costs and just sign high skill players, and that’s the difference I’m trying to point out.
Its hard to make good comparisons with the Twins current staff and the free agent market, but the Bullpen provides a PERFECT example.
Joe Nathan signed his extension last year for 4/47 plus a club option in 2012
K-Rod’s deal this year was for 3/37 plus the same option. Over the same time period (2009-2012) K-rod will make around 7 million dollars more than Nathan (assuming both options vest). The Twins will be paying less money for a pitcher who may well be better than K-rod (Saves aside, look at the peripherals). That is the kind of value I’m talking about. Joe Nathan is more valuable than Francisco Rodriguez because he can provide a equal or superior product at a lower cost.
I agree with you that the Twins are cheap and that when the Pohlads sell the team, we will likely be better off. What I’m trying to get and, and what part two will be about, is that while the Twins are being too cheap, there is wisdom in the strategy they are employing. Paying people over their skill level means you end up with Carlos Silva signed for 4/48, and that’s something the Twins will never do.
December 25th, 2008 at 3:39 am
I understand this is only the first installment, and you make some good points. Mostly, I think too many fans accept the claims by the Twins of poverty when in fact their financial situation is pretty good.
Also, I think you should consider value a little more broadly. Nathan gets less per year than K-Rod but he also received his contract a year early (since it was an extension). So, if Nathan declined in ‘08, the Twins were stuck. The average cost of the contract is therefore misleading; together with the length of the deal, I think Nathan’s contract was actually more valuable than K-Rod’s.
And how many teams really sign someone with the idea they are overpaying? The mistake is in player evaluation, not the contract. The Twins overpaid Cuddyer, for instance, because they overvalued his skills (solid hitting, mediocre fielding in a corner outfielder). Like all clubs, sometimes the Twins get it right and sometimes they don’t.
The key concept, and perhaps you will address this, is that of marginal cost to benefit when a team is a contender. In other words, lets say the Twins home-build an 88-win team. Great. But that probably isn’t quite good enough– they need to add a little more, via a trade of surplus or through free agency– to reach the next level.
In other words, if you save the equivalent of $50 million in marginal player cost, and miss the playoffs, you have not accomplished anything at all. That is the problem with Punto over Furcal, etc. Sometimes you need to actually pay market rates (e.g., on an infielder) on top of your high-producing assets (e.g., the young starters).
December 25th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I thought this was a reasonably-argued essay, even if a few specific points were fairly debatable.
For example, the author’s assertion that “(f)ew franchises, regardless of sport, however, have had to deal with the Minnesota Twins’ infuriating impulse to stand pat.” Which of course explains the long tenure of Twins general manager ‘Stand Pat’ Gillick. Oh, wait, Gillick’s worked for the Blue Jays, Mariners, Orioles, and most recently, the now-MLB Champion Phillies.
So maybe ’standing pat’ isn’t always such a bad thing. There’s certainly an argument to be made that, when you’re already above average, any given transaction has a reasonable chance of merely hastening your return to mediocrity a la the Plexiglass Principle, so you’d better be danged sure you’re going to improve if you pull the trigger on a deal.
Besides, I’d prefer a history of not making deals to a history of making poor deals; I’m thinking specifically of Royals GM Dayton Moore, who after announcing that the organization’s #1 priority for the 2008 off-season was improving the club’s ability to get on base, acquired a first-baseman with a .299 OBP last year.
Again, solid essay, and I look forward to reading the next two parts.
December 25th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
“In other words, if you save the equivalent of $50 million in marginal player cost, and miss the playoffs, you have not accomplished anything at all.”
Sorry, that’s just wrong. If you’re not the Yankees, Red Sox, or some other team that’s decided that market dynamics be damned and they’re just going to spend as much money as they have to in order to remain competitive, you don’t have unlimited chunks of $50 million to spend. So if you spend the $50 million on a guy who helps you make the playoffs once, then the season after that discover that there’s another player out there who probably could have helped you make the playoffs six times for the same cost, then you screwed up.
We can argue whether the Twins should consider themselves ’small market’ or not, but that’s a different issue — given that the Twins won’t throw money at their lineup and rotation problems on a yearly basis, the question becomes can you make a deal now that’s at least as good as any deal you can reasonably consider making in the near future?
I really don’t have a problem with the Twins taking a flyer on Blake and Beltre, because the opportunity cost is just too high.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 pm
appreciate the info guys, thanks