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Brendan Harris and Casey Blake

ubelmann January 30, 2010, at 2:17 pm 30 LTEs , ,

Every time I hear about Harris getting regular time at third base, I think of Casey Blake. Is it a fair comparison? I'm not entirely sure, but here I go (again? on my own?):

.295/.363/.469, .832 OPS -- Brendan Harris, minors
.292/.371/.469, .840 OPS -- Casey Blake, minors

More or less identical, really. And if anything, Harris accumulated his minor league numbers at a younger age.

.267/.324/.396, .720 OPS, 91 OPS+ -- Brendan Harris, MLB, through age 28
.232/.304/.339, .643 OPS, 67 OPS+ -- Casey Blake, MLB, through age 28

Now, of course, Blake didn't get all that many PA in the majors through that point, but it's not as though he really distinguished himself in the PA that he did get. Now, let's add to the Harris and Blake minor league lines a third line:

.295/.363/.469, .832 OPS -- Brendan Harris, minors
.292/.371/.469, .840 OPS -- Casey Blake, minors
.299/.354/.480, .833 OPS -- Danny Valencia, minors

And in terms of strikeouts and walks, we have:

.18 K/PA, .08 BB/PA -- Valencia, minors
.17 K/PA, .10 BB/PA -- Blake, minors
.15 K/PA, .09 BB/PA -- Harris, minors

Anyway, I'm starting to lose focus. Blake wasn't given a chance to start regularly until he was 29. And now years after that, his career OPS of .788 isn't all that different from his minor league career OPS of .840. From age 29-31, Blake was worth about 2.3 WAR/year--a roughly league average player.

I never really believed in Harris as a middle infielder. He was primarily a third baseman in the minors, and if he hits better when given less defensive responsibility, he wouldn't be the first player that did so. (Had he been a Twins farmhand, I have no doubt that many Twins fans would be calling for the Twins to quit jerking him around and give him a chance to hit regularly.) If the Twins go into the year with Harris as the primary third baseman and stick with the plan, I think it could work out pretty well. He's not going to be an All-Star, but he could be a decent regular.

When the Twins kept Jason Kubel instead of letting him walk, they showed faith in a lefty slugger with bad knees and no real defensive position--faith that they didn't show in David Ortiz. By keeping Harris and giving him a chance to play regularly at third base, they would be showing faith in a defensively-challenged hitter who hit well in the minors but has yet to prove himself in the majors--faith that they didn't show in Casey Blake. There are no guarantees that it will work out, but there is reason to believe that it could work. And if it doesn't work, it's a low-stakes gamble backed by the chance that Valencia can fill the role adequately.

DeRosa To Indians/Aaron Miles to Cubs/Improving The 2009 Twins

ubelmann December 31, 2008, at 4:57 pm 46 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , , ,

per ESPN:

DeRosa has been traded to the Cleveland Indians for minor league pitchers Jeff Stevens, Chris Archer and John Gaub. DeRosa will likely slide into Cleveland's opening at third base.

I'm sure this will irk fans who long for the Twins to do something and especially those who would like the Twins to add someone they've heard of before, but DeRosa wouldn't really be a significant upgrade.

In related infielding news, the Cubs signed Aaron Miles. Elsewhere, I've seen the total value of the contract listed at 2 years/$4.9M.

For these two infielders, some internal options, and other names we've heard this offseason, let's look at projected wOBA (as determined by Marcel the Monkey), and career OPS+.

.394 wOBA, 147 OPS+ -- A-Rod
.350 wOBA, 97 OPS+ -- DeRosa
.335 wOBA, 105 OPS+ -- Blake
.329 wOBA, 97 OPS+ -- Harris
.323 wOBA, 93 OPS+ -- Buscher
.308 wOBA, 77 OPS+ -- Miles
.299 wOBA, 74 OPS+ -- Punto
.290 WOBA, 67 OPS+ -- Cesar Izturis

DeRosa's a little younger than Blake, which is likely the main reason his projected wOBA is better than Blake's. DeRosa has been much better than his career averages over the last three years, which is likely the main reason that his projected wOBA is better than Harris'.

First we see that none of the non-Rods are elite hitters and Punto isn't so bad when you compare him to other guys who have gotten similar 2-year deals this offseason. If we're considering these guys as potential full-time players, let's look at how many runs above average their wOBA would make them over 550 PA:

29.7 -- A-Rod
8.6 -- DeRosa
1.4 -- Blake
-1.4 -- Harris
-4.3 -- Buscher
-11.5 -- Miles
-15.8 -- Punto
-20.1 -- Izturis

DeRosa is better at the plate than Harris and Buscher, by maybe about one win over the course of the season. Then it becomes a matter of how well everyone can field. Defensive stats are a bit of a mess for a number of reasons, but let's take a look at career UZR per 150 games at third base for these guys. There are definitely sample size issues here, and I don't think all of these ratings make sense, but it will give us a place to start the conversation.

18.7 -- Punto
8.2 -- Izturis
0.9 -- A-Rod
??? -- Miles
-3.4 -- Blake
-4.1 -- DeRosa
-12.8 -- Buscher
-18.3 -- Harris

First things first--I think that Punto's rating and Harris' rating are each too extreme. No one else seems to rate Punto that high at 3B and I would guess that he's closer to a +10 defender at 3B. Harris, on the other hand, has started only 39 career games at 3B, so there are extreme sample size issues with that number. UZR has him as a -3.9 runs/150G defender at 2B and a -9.9 runs/150G defender at 3B. Compared to other metrics, I think that's generous, but given his tools and the information from 200 games started at 2B/SS, I think it's reasonable to expect that Harris can be a -5 defender at 3B. Optimistically, I would guess he's average and pessimistically, I think -10 is about right at 3B.

Taking those things into consideration, and rounding to emphasize that these are rough measures, here is how I would rate those players as defenders at third base, in runs above average:

10 -- Izturis
10 -- Punto
0 -- A-Rod
0 -- Miles
-5 -- Blake
-5 -- DeRosa
-5 -- Harris
-10 -- Buscher

Using those defensive estimates, we get, for overall value at third base, in runs above average:

30 -- A-Rod
4 -- DeRosa
-4 -- Blake
-6 -- Punto
-6 -- Harris
-10 -- Izturis
-12 -- Miles
-14 -- Buscher

Of the group, I also have the least confidence in Buscher since he had an awfully weak history before the last couple of years and I'm most concerned about his defense, which could very well be worse than -10.

The more I look at it, the more I would lean towards making Harris the full-time 3B, with Buscher playing against tough right-handed pitchers or when we're not as concerned about infield defense. Harris seems more or less to be Casey Blake from 6-8 years ago, and we doesn't cost us anything to acquire him.

I think DeRosa would have been an upgrade. But he would have been a small upgrade, and for an extra $5.5M in salary, plus giving up more talent than the Indians gave up. I'm not sure at all about how good those minor league pitchers are (I suspect they aren't very good), but I'm sure that they have some value. $5.5M and low-value prospects are more than I would have given up for one extra win.

The Twins did a lot last offseason, and they did have done very little this offseason, but given their performances in 2007 and 2008, I think that makes sense. In 2007 we had a number of below-replacement-level performances. Upgrading from awful to mediocre is the easiest kind of improvement that you can make.

In 2008, a big reason that the Twins improved is that they had barely any below-replacement-level performances. Monroe and Everett, for instance, were annoying, but as a group they were only as far below replacement level as Darnell McDonald, Matt LeCroy, and Chris Heintz were (as a group) for the Twins in 2007. Mike Lamb was all kinds of fail this year (especially when you include his glove), but that's nothing compared to the devastation that Rabe, Garrett Jones, Luis Rodriguez, Rondell White, Alexi Casilla, and Nick Punto brought us the year before.

All totalled, the Twins improved from -76 runs in below-replacement-level performance in 2007 to just -19 runs in below-replacement-level performance in 2008. That's a 5-6-win improvement in just replacing your worst players with barely adequate players. That's very nearly as good as the difference between A-Rod and a replacement-level third baseman.

I think that's a pretty overlooked part of the '07 to '08 improvement, but it also means that we've more or less exhausted the cheap and easy ways to improve the team--at least in position players. We ought to be scouring the waiver wires and looking for interesting NRIs to shore up the bullpen and rotation depth. Even there, I don't know how much you can realistically expect improvement. On results, Bonser sucked last year, but I suspect he'll be at or above replacement level this year. Bass was also bad, but he wasn't even below replacement level based on runs allowed--so I wouldn't expect for miracles in improving the bullpen.

The Twins have a roster that can be substantially improved for 2009 in three main ways:

1) Fleece someone in a trade
2) Trade future value for present value
3) Spend $$$$ to improve spots where we are okay but not great

The first option always sounds great, but you can't always depend on deals with suckers to come through. The second option probably doesn't make sense for the Twins because money is a very scarce resource for them and prospects usually costs less money than players you would acquire in a trade. The third option doesn't work because we're not lucky enough to be sitting on a 25-million-resident gold mine.

I didn't really plan on coming back to this, but here I am again. For as much as some people want to be delusional about the advantage that the Yankees have, it's ridiculous to think that small-revenue teams like the Twins aren't at a significant disadvantage compared to large-revenue teams when it comes to assembling their roster. I can hope that the Twins can turn fool's gold into gold, but it's not reasonable to expect that, and I see no obvious, significant upgrades for this team.

Terry Ryan built the basis for this team by being patient and not trading the future for one wild run at a ring. Bill Smith would be wise to follow that precedent. Our offseasons are bound to be boring not because of our management, but because of our budget. Until MLB decides to do something about that, it's just the way it is.

In Defense Of Human Error

ubelmann December 4, 2008, at 9:07 pm 8 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , ,

David Cameron is a good baseball analyst (or I wouldn't bother critiquing him), but I think he's dead wrong about this.

There always seems to be a crowd that is skeptical that anything could be quantified, just because the possibility for error exists. With defensive stats, the question always comes up about whether or not one man's line drive is another man's fliner or if someone collecting data is going to say a ball hit deep in the infield instead of in the shallow outfield. And I'm quite certain that people collecting the data make mistakes from time-to-time. The question that no one bothers to answer is how often those people make mistakes and how much those mistakes matter. There's a good reason no one answers these questions--we don't get to watch the play-by-play scorers from Baseball Info Solutions (or whichever your favorite service is) in action so we can't really say one way or another how well they are doing.

My major beef, though, is with the idea that no human error is involved in the collection of offensive statistics.

When we talk about something like on base percentage, it is a statistic based on indisputable factual results - Player X reached base Y times in Z plate appearances. There’s no gray area - it happened, it was recorded, and no one disagrees.

Emphasis mine. Anyone who has ever watched a baseball game (including David Cameron) knows that this is incorrect, whether or not they realize it. Nearly every game, an umpire makes a call that someone doesn't like. Hell, umpires made enough bad calls on HR/not HR that we've decided to institute a replay system whose very existence proves that people doubt the supposedly "indisputable" nature of offensive statistics. In the case of nationally televised games, not only do some people disagree with the recorded result, but sometimes millions of people disagree with the recorded outcome.

And if we talk about hits, which every offensive valuation system known to man includes, we have to start worrying about whether or not a scorekeeper decided that a batted ball should be a hit or an error. Even just limiting the jury to sports broadcasters, it is clear that not everyone agrees with the decisions that scorekeepers make.

The only reason that anyone actually believes that these are the "incontrovertible facts" is that we've all agreed ahead of time who gets to make the decisions. This is tantamount to saying that if MLB were to choose Baseball Info Solutions as its official batted ball judgment team that suddenly defensive statistics would become "incontrovertible facts."

So, there is human error in taking the data that records defensive and offensive stats, but guess what? THAT'S OKAY. That some human error exists in collecting the data does not inherently make it the most important source of variability in the statistics that we collect.

There are a few reasons that I am really comfortable in saying that the variability in defensive statistics is not mainly due to human error in the data collection:

1. Yes, some defensive stats disagree on which defenders are good and which are bad, but these differences exist even for stats that use the same exact set of data, whether it is from BIS or whoever. My intuition is that because none of these stats are really open source, and some are highly proprietary, we're not really advancing towards a consensus on how to value the various bits of information that we are given. (From a personal standpoint, I kind of get this--it's much more fun to tinker around with the formulas to improve them than it is to sit down, spell everything out (anyone who has had to write documentation knows that it is not fun), cut through all of the erroneous criticisms to get to the real criticisms, and make the hard choices on where you were wrong and should incorporate someone else's viewpoint.)

2. Not all of the all-inclusive offensive stats give us the same picture of how valuable a hitter is. If our offensive stats, supposedly built on infallible data, can disagree, it seems as though we are holding defensive stats to an unfair standard.

3. Sample size.

4. Sample size.

5. Sample size.

6. Sample size.

7. Sample size.

8. Sample size.

9. Sample size.

10. Sample size.

Let me expound a bit, using Justin Morneau, everyone's favorite Kent Hrbek clone. RZR is one of the most straightforward defensive stats that I consider to be reasonable (though it's not really as good as +/- or UZR.) If you track each kind of batted ball for a season, you can figure out which types of batted balls are fielded by a particular fielder over 50% of the time. RZR then defines that as the fielder's zone. RZR is the number of successful plays made (Plays) on balls in the fielder's zone divided by the total number of balls in that zone (BIZ). After that, the Hardball Times also reports plays made out of the defender's zone (OOZ). For Morneau over the last five years, we have:

Year BIZ Plays RZR OOZ
2004 60 46 .767 20
2005 132 120 .909 42
2006 128 98 .766 71
2007 223 171 .767 18
2008 183 128 .699 22

The average RZR in 2008 for all first basemen was .739. Overall, Morneau looks pretty good compared to that average, coming in at a five-year average of .776 and beating the average in all but last year. Three of the five RZR's are actually remarkably similar to one another.

But what I want to focus on here is his total opportunities. Over five seasons, where he compiled over 2,500 cumulative at-bats, Morneau had a mere 726 balls in his zone--726 plays where an average first baseman had a better-than-even shot at making the play. That's only 145 chances per season.

Now let's look at Morneau's hits and extra-base hits from 2007-8 if we divide his at-bats to somewhere close to a 60/132/128/223/183 breakdown. (Span is the span of games I chose. 463-496, for instance, means Morneau's 463rd through 496th major league career games played.)

AB H AVG XBH Span
60 18 .300 7 (413-428)
134 37 .276 18 (439-462)
130 41 .315 17 (463-496)
222 56 .252 22 (497-555)
181 48 .265 12 (556-606)

Now here we have Morneau's average split up into comparable sample sizes to his defensive data, and all the sudden his incontrovertible batting average is jumping all over the place. Is he an average hitter or a superstar? Apparently batting average--really at the heart of all offensive stats out there--is a completely useless statistic that has been completely soiled by the human error of umpires misjudging safe/out calls.

Certainly I can find positions with larger sample sizes. [Okay, it looks like first base is the lowest, which I should have suspected because that's where everyone puts their worst defender, the Cardinals notwithstanding.] Center fielders and middle infielders tend to get more opportunities than anyone else (which is at the heart of why they are the most important positions, but says nothing in and of itself about how difficult they are to play), but even then, the effective sample sizes are pretty small.

If we look at MLB as a whole at each position, here are the number of BIZ per 140 games played (estimated as 8.5 innings per game.)

BIZ/140G -- Position
352 -- 2B
350 -- SS
292 -- 3B
288 -- CF
241 -- RF
228 -- LF
180 -- 1B

I nearly went into a huge RZR tangent, but I'm here to talk sample size. At best, we're looking at about 352 data points*, and some positions are clearly going to be more problematic than others. For fairness, I'll re-run the Morneau analysis, but with Torii Hunter.

*My tangent would have involved talking about how at some positions there are more "gimme" plays than there are at others, so not every BIZ is equally useful to us.

Year BIZ Plays RZR OOZ
2004 287 236 .822 65
2005 222 185 .833 33
2006 330 295 .894 48
2007 384 342 .891 47
2008 289 257 .889 93

Note that the average RZR for centerfielders in 2008 was .922, and they had on average 80 OOZ plays per 140 games (with games estimated as 8.5 innings per game.) Now if we take the first approximately 287/222/330/384/289 AB's from those seasons, we get:

AB H AVG XBH Span
288 78 .271 34 (692-768)
220 61 .277 26 (830-886)
329 90 .274 28 (928-1016)
382 110 .288 50 (1075-1178)
287 81 .282 32 (1235-1309)

Torii's actually pretty consistent with these endpoints, basically as consistent as his season totals. Then again, his RZR is fairly consistent, too, if you accept that something changed between '05 and '06. I'd like to use his injury history to explain that away, but '06 was the season where he probably played the most games while clearly hobbled with an injury. (Though in general, I think his play in the field suffered from him playing through injuries.)

At any rate, in the very best case scenario, you're looking at about half the sample size for defense that you get on offense, and on top of that, I think there are a lot of plays out there (especially in the outfield) that don't inform us as much as a typical at-bat. We can sit back and blame STATS or BIS all day, but ultimately I see no reason to blame them for the variability--we just have less data to work with and we need to figure out how to work under that limitation.

Last but not least---There is still time to let Casey Blake walk, Bill Smith. Back out while you can! I know it stings when you let one get away, but remember the sage words of The Hold Steady: There's always other boys, and you can make them like you!

How To Sign an All-Bat, No-Glove Corner Infielder

ubelmann December 3, 2008, at 6:50 pm 17 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , ,

Give him less than $2M and only commit for one year.

.264/.334/.447 -- Casey Blake, career, age 35
.230/.328/.485 -- Russell Branyan, career, age 33

Blake is somewhat better defensively--though still a poor defender at third base--and Branyan has more power. Branyan would also need to be platooned somewhat more. Still, the difference between these two players is very, very small. Blake is going to get a huge contract and Branyan was snatched up for so little that it hardly counts as a contract.

I think it's also worth pointing out:
.250/.342/.583, 138 OPS+ -- Branyan, 2008
.235/.276/.320, 63 OPS+ -- Lamb, 2008

Branyan has a better career OPS than Lamb by quite a bit--109 to 93--and both are poor defensive third basemen. The Brewers were able to get Branyan for a minor league contract last year and the Twins are still paying Mike Lamb on his $6M/2yr deal.

Looking at the situation now, Buscher is probably a bad enough defensive third baseman that it would have made sense to bring Branyan in as the lefty half of a 3rd-base platoon, especially at a price like this. (And with the Twins being far more competitive than the Mariners, I would have trouble swallowing any hypothesis that Branyan wouldn't have signed for the same amount of money in Minnesota.) And I really wouldn't worry about Branyan being left-handed either, since he would be expected to platoon. He could also have been an intriguing option as a pinch-hitter.

Signing Casey Blake is going to be the equivalent of buying Toasty O's at Cheerios prices. There's nothing wrong with eating Toasty O's, but if you're going to eat Toasty O's, pay the Toasty O's price. Every next day it seems like the Twins might still sign Blake makes me more and more grumpy.

Twins Prepare To Offer Blake Contract; Upset, Ubes, Gleeman, All Other Fans, Too.

FirstTimeLongTime November 15, 2008, at 9:47 am 19 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , ,

From mlb.com

"We received a framework of an offer from the Twins this morning, discussing concepts and certain ranges and things like that," McDowell said. "We agreed that we would talk some more, and that's where we are with them."

Minnesota general manager Bill Smith declined comment, relaying his preference to not discuss any potential ongoing dialogue with free agents.

Why do the Twins have to target at least one free agent who will do nothing but hurt the team every single off season?  Blerg.

Casey Blake Is NOT The Answer At Third Base

ubelmann November 8, 2008, at 6:50 pm 9 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , ,

If I keep hearing rumors like this, I am going to have no choice but to come out of retirement. There are three main reasons that I'm against signing Casey Blake as a free agent.

1) Blake is barely better than a platoon of Harris and Buscher would be, and might be worse.

2) The Twins would need to pay Blake at least as much as they committed to Mike Lamb last offseason.

3) The Twins already have a player with Blake's exact skillset who is five years younger: Michael Cuddyer.

To expound on these points:

1) Let's look at career numbers, which, given everyone's age, should overstate Blake's 2009 abilities compared to Buscher and Harris:

.297/.354/.411 -- Buscher vs. RHP
.266/.330/.436 -- Blake vs. RHP

.295/.360/.440 -- Harris vs. LHP
.258/.345/.478 -- Blake vs. LHP

Now, Blake only takes up one roster spot, so that helps his value compared to the platoon, but looking at various defensive stats, it looks like Blake is probably about as bad as Buscher defensively, maybe worse, and I think certainly worse than Harris is defensively at third.

Blake could also be a decent backup for Morneau at first base, and even give the Twins a viable long-term backup in case Morneau hits the DL, but I'll talk more about this in #3.

2) Paying Blake even $3-5M this year is too much money to commit to him, and with the number of teams that are interested in him, he's going to get multiple years. It's one thing to invest in a 35-year-old player who is a special player, but Blake is not a special player. He's carved out a nice career for himself, but whoever pays Blake is going to be paying for the 31-34-year-old Blake's performance while getting the 35-37-year-old Blake's performance. This is not a good idea for a team that operates under financial constraints.

Going into 2008, PECOTA had Blake with a 21% attrition rate and a 28% collapse rate. Being another year older is not going to help those numbers. For comparison, Lamb was a bigger risk of fail this year: 30% attrition and 39% collapse. Regardless, I don't know why the Twins would want to bother with the risk that they'll have millions tied up in a guy who has a decent chance of falling apart with a limited upside (league average hitter who is a defensive liability.) It's fairly amazing that Blake hasn't fallen apart yet--unathletic guys tend to age poorly--but I don't think the smart money is on him continuing to be decent.

3) Career stats:

.264/.334/.447 -- Casey Blake
.268/.344/.441 -- Michael Cuddyer

Both of them are not good defensive third basemen and fit better defensively as corner outfielders or first basemen. Any mention of Cuddyer of course brings us to the "problem" of Gomez, Span, Delmon, Kubel, and Cuddyer all being outfielders. An equal rotation of five guys into four spots (LF, CF, RF, DH) would give each of them one day off every five days, but eventually one of them is going to get hurt anyway, at which point they become everyday players and I'm not even sure who the OF backup would be at that point. But Gardy could certainly do better than just having them sit out all game on their days off. If Span or Gomez is on the bench to start the game, he could come on for someone as a defensive replacement. If Delmon, Cuddyer, or Kubel is on the bench to start the game, he could come to pinch-hit in a key spot.

Additionally, it seems quite obvious to me that Morneau needs more days off. Or at least more days where he's not in the field. For his career now, Morneau has hit .296/.359/.533 in the first half of the season and .267/.337/.464 in the second half. In the past it may have made sense to keep him on the field because our backup options suck, but if say Cuddyer was going to DH a number of times anyway, then we could instead put Cuddyer on the field at first base and put Morneau at DH, where he gets a little more rest. Neither one of them is a very good fielder, so that doesn't especially make a difference from where I sit. (And while we're talking about days off, it sure seemed like Delmon and Gomez responded well to the occasional day off, so more days off keeping everyone's legs fresh sure seems like a good idea for a team that depends so much on speed.)

On top of that, I really don't know who you'd get rid of. Obviously, there are things I don't like about Delmon's game, but those are obvious to everyone at this point, and I'd rather not sell low on Delmon. Span and Gomez are both cheap and I'd be fine keeping them around. Kubel is limited, but he's pretty good at what he does well (hit right-handed pitching) and I don't think there's a huge market out there for him. Realistically, I can't see the Twins even considering trading Cuddyer, given his clubhouse leader and general good citizen status. Plus, with his injury last year, we'd be selling low on him, too. This isn't a situation like having a can't-miss prospect catcher at the same time your current catcher just had a career year--whatever surplus current exists in the Twins' outfield isn't that much of a surplus and none of these guys are flawless.

To make a final point: WTF do the Twins do with Harris if they sign Blake to be an everyday third baseman? As far as I can tell, giving up on Harris as a third baseman now would be essentially the same as giving up on Blake as a third baseman back in 2003. The Twins can't undo the Blake Mistake, but they can keep from repeating that particular mistake. Harris should only be used in the middle infield in an absolute pinch. He's a corner infielder. He's not a terribly good corner infielder, but he can be mediocre there, and certainly as part of a platoon he can help the Twins out, and while I'd rather have a defensive guy as the backup SS, you could do worse than Harris as your backup SS.

So I really see no reason to spend some of the Twins' precious little money on Casey Blake. Where the Twins really need help is at SS or 2B. Tolbert at SS or 2B is a bigger problem than Buscher/Harris at 3B, and the Twins have only one guy (Casilla) who I would feel comfortable as an everyday player at 2B or SS. Getting more help in the bullpen should also be more of a priority than overpaying a soon-to-be-washed-up third baseman. I would love it if the Twins had more power, but Blake isn't going to make the Twins a better team, so I'm not interested in his power.