Comments on: Twins Notes: Immobilized, underrated, grated, deteriorated, and elevated

By: PierreTheLion

PierreTheLion — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 21:43:59 +0000

“Immobilized, underrated, grated, deteriorated, and elevated”

You can get any .550 OPS catcher you want, at Rochester’s Restaurant.

By: Pedro Munoz

Pedro Munoz — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:06:53 +0000

Aaron, can you check to see if the IP address for “Sean” is coming from Bill Smith’s office?

By: brian

brian — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 08:14:15 +0000

I was hoping AG was going to so the rare thing and put Sean out of his misery, but that would be tiresome rehash of old columns. Read them. It’s 2011. The closer role is way overrated, relief pitchers are often misused in high leverage situations, and we’ll need a catcher when Mauer stops catching. Bad trade.

By: savant

savant — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 03:46:33 +0000

Sean: First rule of holes is — when you’re in one, stop digging.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:50:51 +0000

Solid relief pitching is sought after in a Divisonal race. Capps is that not a dime a dozen relief pitcher. If Capps was a dime a dozen the Twins would have at least 7 of them. They don’t and can’t seem to find many of value. Ramos is NOT an above average hitter and one good month of hitting doesn’t prove he is even average. If Capps is easily found then I don’t see why teams are giving out 3 year deals to relief pitchers or paying Rauch 3.5 million for a season. It’s hard to find pitching. Capps has a proven record and was outstanding last year for the Twins. This year he has some crazy numbers as well and has pitched better than his ERA suggests. He is also hurt as they used him to pitch multiple innings because he was a dime a dozen relief pitcher while the rest of the pen was God awfull.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:45:45 +0000

It’s also garbage to those who say Capps has thrown too many strikes this year and is using his fastball too much. Hitters are hitting 250 off his fastball while walking two batters. He has been hurt off his change up and slider. He hasn’t thrown them well. He still has a XFIP of 3.80 quite below his actual ERA. He has been unlucky and has given up some shots while hanging some of those pitches. If he has a little more luck he would be having a much better season. As for Jon Rauch he goes the opposite where he is pitching lucky this year. XFIP 4.39 9 walks 5 HRs 19Ks in 28 Innings pitched. The blown saved percentage is a stupid stat to prove a closers or relief pitchers ability. Capps is a solid relief pitcher. Again not 7.1 million but no relief pitcher is really worth that. Rauch is worth about the Vets minimum but getting paid solid dollar (3.5 Million no way) as well.

By: Karl

Karl — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:41:02 +0000

The analogy is flawed – the point remains the same.

Why trade a rare, young cheap commodity for an older, common, expensive one.

Agreed Ramos is not Our Lord and Saviour. Nor will he ever be.

However to argue that everyday major league level catchers
who can play above average defense and above average offense for their position is a commodity worth trading for a really expensive dime a dozen reliever is pure ignorance.

I am not making a results based argument here – the points about Ramos doing this and Capps doing that are irrelevant.

I am making (a poorly worded) argument that trading these two commodities is pure folly.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:30:30 +0000

I think the way to totally destroy the analogy above is that the Twins (guy) were going to add pieces to win the Series(Wife happy forever!) and traded an unproven propsect at (obstructed view seats) a position they are set at (home plate tickets) for a guy who was then lights out for them for 70 games. Wilson Ramos has a better value currently than he did last season but that’s changing. Wilson Ramos has a 194 average since May 1st in the weak NL not AL. While his fielding is good its not Drew Butera good. His minor league track numbers also suggest he isn’t a super stud. A lot of Twins bloggers don’t mention this. They are happy to mention Twins players short comings or if they are on streak that probably won’t last (Casilla). Well Ramos was on a April streak. Now he totally can’t hit anything in the weaker NL. That isn’t brought up only how he is still having a good season at 23. I like how it’s just assumed as well that Ramos could have brought in a better player as well. I doubt at the time he could have. So now it’s easy to rip on the decision as the Twins didn’t win the Series (wife cheated) and totally suck this year (beam collasped home plate seats) Capps isn’t the cause of that though nor is not having Ramos (crappy obstructed view seats). Not even close. If you want to moan about the 7 million they gave Capps that’s something. To me Ramos for Capps for just 70 games was worth it. They could have used the 7 million on J.J Hardy. And hats off to Pavano really bringing it.

By: Fasterandfuriouser

Fasterandfuriouser — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 01:17:21 +0000

An ’04 Honda Accord ain’t that bad.

Capps is more like a ’99 Saturn with rust.

By: Karl

Karl — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:34:52 +0000

I’ll take a stab at the Capps/Ramos comment.

If anyone thinks on the face of things that dealing a young, cheap, scarce commodity for an older, expensive common commodity is ever a good idea they need to retake economics 101.

Let’s say you bought season tickets to the Twins game in an awesome section, lets say Row 5 on the Aisle in the puffy seats behind the home dugout for $500. The catch is: every year you renew these tickets – the price doubles. Let’s also say for the sake of this that the face value on the tickets is $5,000. So you are getting a pretty good deal. You now hold a very valuable commodity unless the Twins start performing like the T-Wolves or in year 5 and beyond you are paying more than the actual face value. (In this fantasy illustration these tickets are Ramos).

Now, you also have the best possible season tickets, Row 1 on the aisle in the puffy seats directly behind home plate. (For the sake of this argument these tickets are Mauer). So the “Ramos” tickets you just bought are going to go unused. Kind of a waste of two damn nice seats, unless you have out of town guests or bigamy becomes legal in Minnesota.

You decide that you should trade the Ramos tickets for something you can use to impress your wife. It will improve your relationship with her – and that is your number one overriding goal in life – to make your wife happy. There is a pretty big market for these tickets so you should be able to trade them for something pretty valuable. It seems easy that you could come away with something nice because of the relative demand for these tickets.

So after a week of craigslist – suprisingly the best offer you get is a 2004 Honda accord – the body is in Mint condition, but it needs you to put $3000 worth of engine work into it to run. The Kelley blue book value on the car after the repairs is $5000. (For the sake of this argument the Accord is Capps.) You decide to take the offer, because well, you didn’t get any better ones immediately. I mean it is a pretty decent car – and a slight upgrade to the 2003 Ford Focus that your wife currently drives.

Wouldn’t it be way better to just hang on to the Ramos tickets, renew them next season for $1000 and see if you get a better offer?

The lesson here is inherent value – yes you traded an item that had a face value of $5000 for $5000, but you had to put more cash into maintenence of the car than you would have to maintain the tickets.

And the real lesson to be had here kids: at the end of the day you are now the proud owner of a 2004 Honda Accord.

Congrats. Nice job of bargaining on the open market.