The Minnesota Twins exceeded expectations in 2015, winning 83 games and remaining in contention for a Wild Card berth until the final weekend of the season. Many see it as an anomaly and are wont to predict regression. Others are more bullish, despite the team’s question marks and lack of star power.

Terry Ryan raised an eyebrow when I inquired as to the quality of his club heading into the coming campaign.

“It’s not only knowing where you are, but who you are,” Ryan told me. “And I think I know who we are. I also know where we came from.”

The longtime GM made a salient point. Four games over .500 is meaningful progress when you’re a small-market team coming off of four consecutive 90-plus loss seasons. Not that he’s satisfied. Prior to their 2011-2014 doldrums, the Twins captured six AL Central titles in a 10-year stretch. To Ryan, what’s anomalous is losing.

“We can be happy with what we did last year, but we shouldn’t be overjoyed, by any stretch,” said Ryan. “We have a long way to go. I would hope that last year was just us moving in the right direction.” Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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Ben and Sam discuss whether signing Jason Heyward makes the Cubs the best team in baseball.

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Given the competitive nature of the baseball industry, teams don’t go around spilling their secrets. If a team had a perfect formula for predicting injuries, it wouldn’t be in their interest to give that jewel away to the teams they are trying to beat on the field. The same is true, to a lesser extent, with player evaluations. If a team thinks the league is overrating one of its prospects because the league doesn’t have complete information, it doesn’t benefit the team to tell the league why it’s wrong.

As a result of this dynamic, we always have to take public comments from clubs with a grain of salt. Comments from team officials are designed to serve the team’s interest and that means they don’t always reveal the complete truth. We accept this as part of life, but generally expect teams to be somewhat constrained by things that sound true. For example, if the Braves had discovered some type of flaw with Shelby Miller, they wouldn’t have told everyone they were shopping him because he was due to break down. They would say they were shopping him because he’s a valuable player and they’re looking to rebuild. The latter isn’t totally untrue, it’s just not the full truth.

Teams know things they don’t want to share and we assume they only share things that serve their interest. Sometimes it’s about public relations, sometimes it’s strategy, and sometimes it’s to build good will with the media. There are lots of reasons that teams might choose to share information, but in most cases they’re not forced to say anything at all. Most of the time, teams say what we expect them to say. A lot of the time it’s largely the truth, but sometimes it isn’t.

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The Braves kept working the trade machine on Thursday, as they continue to tear down their team in hopes of building it back up. The club once again directed its attention to the National League West, this time getting the now-limbered-up Padres into the mix. And in doing so, they managed to get a couple of players in Casey Kelly and Ricardo Rodriguez who may have interest in the future for a player — Christian Bethancourt — whose interest probably has died out.

Once upon a time, Casey Kelly was going to be a star. If you’re looking for a player to whom you might point when attempting to characterize the risk inherent in prospects, Kelly would be a great example. As one of the prizes of the Adrian Gonzalez trade, Kelly was thought to be within striking distance of the majors heading into the 2011 season. After all, when the Red Sox had traded him to the Padres, Kelly had 21 starts at Double-A under his belt. That’s plenty these days. Jose Fernandez didn’t make any before he graduated. Neither did Carlos Rodon. Lance McCullers made five, and then graduated. Anthony DeSclafani made 21 in Double-A before graduating to Triple-A, and hit the majors after 13 starts there. I’m cherry picking, but you get the point: at the time of the trade, Kelly was (understandably) thought to be on the cusp.

He wasn’t. He made 27 starts in Double-A in 2011, and didn’t graduate to Triple-A or the majors. At 21, his 3.98 ERA wasn’t exactly blowing people away, nor was his 3.77 FIP or 17.1% strikeout rate. So he opened 2012 in the minors. He started at Triple-A, but he missed most of the season after straining his elbow during his second start of the season. That was probably the red flag for his career. Had he shut it down and had Tommy John surgery right then, he might be working on his second major league season already. But he didn’t. After sitting out from mid-April to late July, he came back and made six starts in the minors — striking out 14 against two walks in the last two, both at Double-A — before making his major league debut.

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Note: this post was published earlier today at FOX Sports, before reports surfaced that Heyward has reached an agreement with the Chicago Cubs.

Look towards the top of any list of free agents available this off-season and you’ll find Jason Heyward’s name. There are good reasons for this. Sure, he’s polite at parties, never leaves the seat up, and always holds the door open for the elderly, but it’s more than that. He’s got perhaps the most well-rounded set of skills the free-agent market has ever seen. He’s got a career wRC+ of 118, so he can hit; he’s got some power in there, as well as on-base ability; he’s an excellent baserunner and a superb fielder. There’s really nothing that Heyward doesn’t do well, and when you add his age into the equation, that’s when things get silly, financially speaking. Ah, his age. That’s really the crux of this whole thing.

Heyward is 26 all year, so unlike most free agents, the team that signs him will get his peak seasons. There are some players who have many of Heyward’s abilities but who won’t approach what he’s expected to get. Ben Zobrist, for instance, is an interesting comparison. He’s a good fielder, a smart baserunner, he has some pop in his bat and he’s exhibited about as much on-base ability as Heyward has. He also plays 70 positions despite baseball not having that many. But Zobrist was born in May, 1981, meaning he’ll be 35 years old next season. Heyward was born in August of 1989, so he’ll be 26. This is why Zobrist just signed with the Cubs for four years, $56 million while Heyward is expected to more than double both the total years as well as the AAV of Zobrist’s contract. Imagine if you could go back in time and sign Ben Zobrist for 10 years beginning at his age-26 season. In today’s market, that would be a bargain.

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The 2015 Rule 5 draft has come and gone. A total of 16 players were selected in the major league portion of the event. In what follows, I take a look at what KATOH has to say about the players selected. The players are listed in the order they were selected in yesterday’s draft. Projections have been produced based both on 2015 and also 2014 minor-league stats.

Tyler Goeddel, OF (Profile)
New Team: Philadelphia
Old Team: Tampa Bay
KATOH Projection Through Age 28 (2015 stats): 2.9 WAR
KATOH Projection Through Age 28 (2014 stats): 1.5 WAR

Goedel was one of the players I profiled in my Rule 5 preview. He transitioned from third base to the outfield in 2015, and he took a step forward offensively as well. He hit a strong .279/.350/.443 in Double-A and also kicked in 28 steals. Goeddel’s had some trouble making contact in the past, but his combination of power and speed is intriguing. Hitters who both possess that skill set and have already succeeded in Double-A don’t grow on trees. He may not be quite ready for the show going by the numbers, but is close enough that he probably won’t embarrass himself. And at 23, there’s still room for him to improve. The Phillies won’t be winning many games in 2016, so Goeddel is exactly the type of player on whom they should by taking fliers. Maybe they’ll catch lightning in a bottle like they did with last year’s Rule 5 pick, Odubel Herrera.

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