Q: How did the Twins compete after trading away the best pitcher in baseball?
A: That trade didn't actually hurt them.
In many corners, Gomez was seen as a complete disaster this last year. I don't think that was the case at all, though.
Gomez had a 0.3 VORP last season. With his glove being something like 10-15 runs above average* and about 2 runs above average in baserunning, he was about 1-1.5 wins above replacement this year and cost nothing in payroll.
*UZR has him at +17 runs. The Fielding Bible had him at +32 plays, which is about +16 runs. PMR has him at +12 runs. I thought he looked ugly, but sometimes hitters with ugly swings are pretty good and sometimes fielders who look bad are pretty good.
Santana last year was about 26 runs above average, so say about 4.5 wins above replacement level. Santana was worth 3-3.5 wins more than Gomez, but he also came with a significant payroll cost.
With that in mind, I think there are basically three relevant scenarios to compare here:
1) The Twins keep Santana, do not extend him, get two high draft picks.
In this case, Santana would have given the Twins about 4.5 wins and cost them $13.25M. At $4M/win, Santana would only be counted on for 3.3 wins, so the Twins would come out about 1.2 wins ahead of what they spent in this scenario. The draft picks that they get would probably be roughly as good as two of the four of Gomez, Humber, Mulvey, and Guerra (themselves first round picks or first-round talent signed as an international free agents.)
2) The Twins give Santana the same contract that the Mets gave him. (There's really no reason to believe he would have accepted a smaller extension with the Twins.)
In this case, Santana would still be about 4.5 wins but would have cost them $19M. At $4M/win, the Twins should have expected about 4.75 wins out of their investment, so they would have roughly broken even. Santana's price is only going up under this contract and I doubt he's getting much better than this and there's always the chance that you'll lose a season or two completely to injury.
3) The Twins trade Santana for Gomez, Mulvey, Humber, Guerra. (This is the only package that we know for sure was on the table.)
The difference between Santana and Gomez was about 3 wins. At $4M/win, the Twins needed to save at least $12M in payroll for them to break even on the trade-off. Compared with scenario #1, they saved $13M (which they should be able to use to get 3.25 wins) and compared with scenario #2, they saved $18M (which they should be able to use to get 4.5 wins.) Looking forward, they essentially have the equivalent of four high draft picks in Gomez, Humber, Mulvey, and Guerra.
Honestly, I think they did pretty damned well for themselves. Making the trade is no worse in terms of risk than the first case, and the Twins wound up with more talent than they would have expected through the draft. And Santana's contract almost certainly overpays him, and would have been a huge gamble on a limited payroll. It likely would have been the worst choice for them to make.
With arguments like this, a common criticism is that you can't just convert dollars into wins at a store, you have to find players who actually fit into the team. My response is this: on average, in baseball as a whole, GMs find free agent talent for $4M/win. If a GM does worse than this, he is not good at signing free agents. If he then overpays players that he has on hand rather than trading them for payroll savings, he is just as bad and the problem is still ultimately that he can't sign players for what they are worth. Maybe Bill Smith is a terrible GM, but it's not because of the Santana deal.
The Santana trade didn't make the Twins a weaker team, and it looks like the best deal overall to me. Unless there was a really good reason to think that one additional win would give them not just a division title but a WS title, I don't really even see a downside. It gives them the most flexibility and I think there's still a good amount of upside to the deal. (I think Gomez will get better at the plate, and at the least, I think we'll get some decent, cheap bullpen innings out of Mulvey, Humber, and Guerra.)
At the time, I thought that the rumored Yankees' packages sounded the best, but Melky Cabrera took about a thousand steps back this year, and according to UZR has been about 36 runs per year worse on defense, which is just a huge, huge gap. Hughes and Kennedy were also awful this year, though I think they still have some good seasons in front of them.
Some of the Red Sox packages were intriguing, but there were so many different rumored combinations of Red Sox packages that I have no real idea what was really on the table. I'll say this though: Lester managed to be nearly as good as Santana this year and I did not expect that at all. He seemed more like a rich man's Glen Perkins to me. Lowrie was pretty good--maybe a touch above what I might have expected--though I'm still unsure about his defense. Ellsbury and Gomez were roughly equivalent in overall value this year and Masterson was actually pretty bad, even though I expect he'll improve the same as I expect Hughes and Kennedy will improve.
So I think Bill Smith got this one right. I'm still skeptical about his abilities to fill out the rest of the team going forward, but he hasn't done anything disastrous just yet.
True, but those 3 wins would have been the difference between the playoffs or not. Don't get me wrong, that's an analysis that can only be made in retrospect. It doesn't make the decision wrong; if anything we should be happy with the Smith's move insofar as we stayed so close to the playoffs while losing a talent like Santana. But I do think it's fair to say that, in retrospect, the Twins would be in the playoffs with an outfield of mostly Kubel/Span/Young plus somebody at DH, and Santana on the mound every fifth game. And I think getting to the playoffs is probably more valuable to the franchise overall than 2 additional prospects.
It's fun to look back though - how could Smith have predicted that Span would be so good and the Indians/Tigers so bad? It really seemed like we needed a CF.
True, but those 3 wins would have been the difference between the playoffs or not.
Looking back at my post, I think I didn't make this clear enough--we should have gotten the same number of wins this year out of Gomez + $13M that we would have if we had kept Santana. Gomez + $13M should be 4-5 wins and Santana (costing us $13M) was 4.5 wins. It's a wash. One may argue that the Twins weren't good enough at using that extra $13M, but to me, that is a different issue. There was nothing about the trade itself that prevented us from winning more games.
It's fun to look back though - how could Smith have predicted that Span would be so good and the Indians/Tigers so bad?
Span you maybe kinda sorta could have projected. The Tigers definitely had question marks on defense and I thought the Cabrera/Willis trade was questionable. Their bullpen probably shouldn't have had as many injuries has it did. The Indians were just unlucky on having their best players injured--there's no real projecting that.
And I think getting to the playoffs is probably more valuable to the franchise overall than 2 additional prospects.
Continuing to pick up prospects like that is what keeps the Twins competitive given their revenue. Pretty much the only way for them to stay competitive is to consistently acquire players whose on-field production is higher than what they are getting paid, and by far the easiest way to do that is to acquire players who are indentured servants rather than free agents.
I guess I should always throw in a disclaimer that when evaluating GMs we always have to take into account their budget situation. Cashman is probably going to hand out 2-3 contracts just this offseason that will be fine--maybe even very good--for the Yankees, but would be terrible, awful, potentially disastrous contracts for the Twins. As a result, the Twins really have no chance at acquiring some of the elite players in baseball and that puts them at a huge disadvantage. The mainstream media doesn't really beat that drum anymore, but I'll beat it all day. When the Yankees and Red Sox have about 2.5-3 times as much marginal payroll as the Twins, they have a gigantic advantage over us.
Unless you knew that Span's lasik surgery also removed the kryptonite, I don't know how you could have projected Span would be as good as he was this year. I think his eye surgeon deserves a nice Christmas gift.
I'm not that high on the non-Gomez parts of the trade. I've heard Humber's name tossed around as possible trade material. Who knows, maybe this will be another one of those trades that keeps on giving?
I agree that Span's performance this year was kinda sorta out of nowhere.
kinda sorta??? He hadn't had an OPS north of 700 since his time at Ft. Meyers in 2005!!!!! His OPS in Rochester last year was two-hundred points higher than his career, minor-league OPS.
There is No Freakin' Way that you could have projected Span to be above replacement, let alone good, offensively, at the major-league level last year.
There is (almost) every reason to suspect that Span is a one-hit wonder.
You'll note that two LTEs above, the following phrasing is used:
So, I was kinda sorta disagreeing with that for the reasons you state.
Well, then why didn't you come right out and hit ubelmann with a trout like he deserved?
You don't hit the master chef with a trout because he sprinkled a little too much pepper on one dish.
The main reason I said that is that Span has always been young for his level and promoted aggressively, and I think that in general fans haven't put his numbers in the proper context from that standpoint. For another, a lot of players with his strikeout rate develop power and power is usually the last thing to develop. (This is another reason I am still hopeful that Gomez and Delmon can improve at the plate.) Lastly, if we actually had people watching him play, we would have known that his defense was good, which was a huge part of his value.
Looking at his offensive numbers, there are definitely things that you would not have expected (mainly the walk rate) and I suspect that his offensive numbers will take a bit of a hit this year, but I think he'll still be very good.
I don't think Span is a one-hit wonder. I'm convinced he's a one-lasik-procedure wonder. I'm
convincedhoping his bar has been raised due to his improved eyesight.GoGo haters need to remember the kid just turned 23. I'm with Ubes, Gomez will get better at the plate. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he one day owns a mantle full of Grammies. He might drive you nuts with some of his antics--two strike bunt attempts come to mind, but he's just as likely to make you jump out of your seat and cheer.
boy, I hope you guys are right. But there isn't much in the record to support that, simply because there isn't much in the record to draw inferences from.
He's been soooo young and pushed sooo fast that we are tempted to excuse his weak plate performances in the minors. But they were weak. the best case to be made for him probably is his 2006 Eastern League line of 281/350/423 (mebbe ubes or someone can contextualize that) in 120 games. I'd be reasonably happy with that line from him in the majors, but it's not what you'd call "star" material.
--Mr. Pessimism
Let me justify my love a little bit here:
Gomez was pushed hard and had a .735 OPS in the minors. As a rule of thumb, it seems to work out that if you are drafted out of HS (or start around age 18 or 19 as a professional) and are promoted at roughly one level per year, your career major league OPS generally approaches your minor league OPS. Some Twins examples:
Minors/Majors -- Player
.738/.794 -- Hunter
.663/.693 -- Guzman
.676/.680 -- Rivas
.859/.785 -- Cuddyer (he repeated at AA and put up huge numbers that year, though)
.830/.856 -- Mauer
This is far from an exhaustive list, but it seems to work pretty well, no? If Gomez can just put up his .735 OPS from the minors in the majors, he's Torii Hunter Lite. If he can duplicate Hunter's OPS improvement, he's Torii Hunter II. It maybe seems a bit too good to be true that his best comparable would be the guy that he's replacing, but it seems to be a pretty good guide to me as long as we don't get too literal. Gomez has more speed and will probably have somewhat less power, but at the plate he still reminds me a lot of Hunter, who still has never figured out how to hit 2-strike sliders.
(Side note: If we use this rule of them for Delmon, we'd expect him to have about an .880 OPS as a major leaguer. Given his .740 OPS as a 22-year-old, that certainly seems possible, but I don't think even an .880 OPS makes him an elite player, especially since he's going to be a DH. Maybe my Soriano (.847) comparison is somewhat harsh, but they do have pretty similar hacktastic tendencies and Vlad-level goodness (.964) seems really unlikely even just based on his minor league numbers, which is the most impressive part of his resume so far.)