More Cuts…
Posted by ubelmann on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Joe Christensen is reporting that the Twins have dropped Lew Ford, Josh Rabe, and Tommy Watkins.
I think the Twins underrate Ford to a certain degree these days, as it seems to me that he could've helped the team out down the stretch in a platoon role with Tyner. Still, he's not a necessary component going forward, and this is an indication that the Twins don't consider a Ford/Tyner platoon as a Torii Hunter replacement.
Getting rid of Rabe gives me hope that the Twins will at least be looking to upgrade from Rabe (career .277/.343/.404 in the minor leagues with suspect defense in a corner outfield spot) to a AAAA outfielder.
Joe indicates that Watkins could be given a minor league deal and a spring training invite. That'd be fine by me. By all accounts, he sounds like a nice guy, and not everyone in AAA is going to be a big-time prospect. Of course, another team could pick him up, and thanks to injuries/ineffectiveness from other players in the organization, he could find himself in a playoff series against the Twins, collect four hits over two games, and be granted "Twins killer" status by TBS broadcasters.
Getting rid of some of these guys could be a good first step to improving the marginal talent in the organization, but that all depends on the second, third, and fourth steps.
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There's no sense paying Lew Ford about $1 million when there are guys cut loose during spring training that will come for the minimum and do what he does.
I agree, but I still think they mis-handled Ford during the regular season. Ford complemented Tyner well, just like Cirillo complemented Buscher, but rather than exploiting the obvious platoon opportunities available to them at essentially no cost, they dumped Ford and Cirillo, stubbornly continued to platoon Kubel, and generally showed no signs of having any kind of plan.
Well, there's that. Maybe Mr. Smith can rectify these problems.
These moves seem to be aimed at clearing spots on the 40 man roster. I'd expect to hear soon that RonDL is definitely retiring, which will clear another roster spot. Hunter and Silva will most likely be gone to free agency as well, opening up two more spots. Now, if I were going to trade Santana for a package of several players, I'd need to have some room on the roster for them....
Or the Twins feel like they have to protect a lot of guys from the Rule 5 draft after losing Kevin Cameron, et al this past off-season.
I didn't pay full attention, but did TBS note that Ojeda spent a year with the Twins and had been out of the majors in the three years between then and now?
I can't say that I paid close enough attention to both games to say for sure. They may have. I just get tired of the "look, he's playing his former team, clearly his results (especially in a small sample) reflect his attitude towards his former organization!" angle.
Seeing Augie Ojeda playing 2nd base for an NL playoff team makes me wonder whether the Twins might still be playing for the pennant if they just could have switched leagues this year.
What am I to do with a Lew Ford jersey now?
It's now a collector's item.
It's announcements like these that would have gone over as a much bigger deal on BatGirl.
Wear that bad boy proudly.
Car wash chamois?
At least Ford had a year where he was a good player, and another one where he was decent. There's no shame in that.
At least with it on I'm easily identified at Conventions.
Outrighted? So we could still re-sign these guys, right?
Watkins could take over the L-Rod role, and Ford, at less than $1 million, could get thrown back into the mix if we decide to patch CF on the cheap. It seems like they've soured on him severely, though, hence why they didn't even bother with ubelmann's utilization suggestion this past season (and I can't say that I blame them).
Ford has about a 160-point OPS edge on Tyner over their careers against LHP. Lew does some boneheaded things, but as long as both of them are around, I think it's a mistake to concentrate on the relatively small number of times Lew makes a memorable mistake and overlook Tyner's sub-.300 SLG against lefties. (I mean, really, Tyner has 4 doubles in his entire career against left-handed pitching, no triples, and no home runs. There's more to life than power, but you have to do a lot to overcome a handicap like that, and Tyner doesn't.) For me, it's less about how large the impact is, and more the Twins' seeming to be unable to grasp what their players' strengths and weaknesses are and utilize them accordingly.
Well, when you're platooning Tyner and Ford, and you still have even bigger holes at other positions, you're kind of screwed regardless.
Plus, Ford's big career OPS vs. LHP advantage over Tyner erodes rather quickly when you look at his post-2004 numbers. Over the past three years, their performances against LHP are a lot closer, and the advantage of giving one regular at-bats, and hopefully consolidating the roster spot (not likely for the Twins, I know), might outweight any marginal platoon advantage.
I don't think this is really a player utilization problem. I suspect part of this is "people management", which I'm not going to defer to as a be-all, end-all, but given Ford's collapse the past few years, I can certainly understand why the Twins wouldn't be interested in giving him much MLB playing time until he started showing signs of recovering his form. Marginally outproducing Jason Tyner against lefties isn't much of an endorsement.
I suspect part of this is “people management”, which I’m not going to defer to as a be-all, end-all, but given Ford’s collapse the past few years, I can certainly understand why the Twins wouldn’t be interested in giving him much MLB playing time until he started showing signs of recovering his form. Marginally outproducing Jason Tyner against lefties isn’t much of an endorsement.
How about outproducing Tyner, White, and Kubel against lefties? It's funny how Ford's collapse warranted kicking him to the curb (Rochester) while Rondell's collapse warranted increased playing time in the outfield where he was a defensive liability. And how exactly was Luis Rodriguez helping the team more than Ford would have helped the team?
Like I said, it's less about how large the impact is, and more about the Twins' seeming to be unable to look at their players' strengths and weaknesses for what they are. Ford v. Tyner is just a symptom of a larger problem.
Mauer saw too much playing time against lefties and Redmond saw too much playing time against righties because Gardy refused to acknowledge the platoon problem there.
Kubel saw too little playing time against lefties so that who could hit against lefties exactly (if not Ford)?
Cirillo played almost every game when the Twins faced a left-handed pitcher, and was hitting lefties just fine (.293/.348/.466), but the Twins saw no place for this on the team.
Hitting lefties was a problem for this team, and even though Ford and Cirillo were hitting better than Mauer and Morneau against lefties, they were taken off the team for no good reason.
Not every change worth making has to be the difference between a division title and a .500 finish. The Twins should be chasing after every advantage they can get. After all, isn't it the little things that matter?
I hear you, ubes, but not every change that reasonably can be made can be deduced from numbers alone. I don't even think Ford/Tyner can be considered a symptom of a larger problem (other than the obvious problem: that we're playing Ford and Tyner!). There's likely more than meets the eye with the Ford case. And Cirillo was pretty much a salary dump.
So then your "larger problem" is that Mauer/Redmond weren't used in an optimal platoon arrangement, and Kubel didn't have a consisent usage pattern either. Injuries muddle both of those situations, but even then, they are probably not direct correlaries to the playing of Tyner over Ford.
I don't understand the problem with platooning Ford and Tyner. The team's morale is going to take a big hit because two marginal players are being platooned? What's the argument against platooning them?
I never said anything about team morale -- it's about Ford. Ford is a shell of his former self as a player, and completely discounting his occasional mistakes in the field, he looks lost at the plate, has a poor approach, and his swing has looked absolutely terrible.
I could certainly see management not wanting to reward this player with playing time, even in a platoon situation, until he got himself straightened out. With regular at-bats, a struggling Ford is more likely to post a 30-60 OPS advantage against LHP these days, not the career 160 figure you quoted, and that's a pretty marginal gain, especially if he's batting in front of Buscher, L-Rod, and Punto. And if he's showing no signs of improvement, his salary means he likely won't be back in 2008 anyway, so there isn't much reason commit game time towards the process. (And, to those that say regular ML AB are the solution to Ford's problem, I would disagree on that count as well. I would suspect Ford's batting problems are evident in practice as well as in however many games he plays in the field.)
I just don't think this is a problem as simple as looking at the two players' handedness and their career OPS platoon splits -- there is certainly more complexity to Ford and his career progression. I certainly don't agree with Twins management on everything, but given the marginal gains of your suggestion and all the wild cards hinted at in Ford's career, I don't think their conclusion here is necessarily unreasonable, nor can it really be considered as evidence supporting other decisions I may disagree with.
There really shouldn't be an "L-Rod role." Punto should be the utility guy. No need for another, and especially one who can't even play SS.
This is a sad day in Minnesota Twins history...
The real question is who the Twins are going to bring in to replace the "LLEEEEEEWWWWWW" chants from all the thousands that were part of the Lew Ford Fan Club.
Well... we have BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF.
We still have Punto, so "booooooooo" chants are still en vogue.
I told this story at the Convention-
We brought my grandma up to the Dome for a game and everyone let out a big "LLLLLEEEEWWWW". She looked at me and said "Why are they booing that young man? Isn't he on the Twins?" It took awhile to explain it, but she eventually thought it was "cute".
http://www.xanga.com/groups/group.aspx?id=382475
Is it safe to say that this community should be put on suicide watch?