Baby Please Don’t Go

Today marks the final edition of my departed Twins series, examining the performance with the Twins, and after leaving the Twins of everyone who played a meaningful amount of time in both positions. To rehash the details, I’m conglomerating a 3-year VORP average for Twins players and comparing it to the VORP average after the players left Minnesota. For more details, see the original article. Today, I finish with the last couple of departures from after the 2001 season, and finally get to add up the numbers and make some conclusions.

2001

Hector Carrasco (3-year Minnesota VORP avg 9.7, Post-Minnesota VORP avg 17.7): Carrasco is one of the most fascinating cases in all of Major League Baseball, and he has become one of my favorite players. After spending 12 years as a pretty average middle reliever with a decent K rate and a BB rate a little on the high side, he found himself 34 years old, past his prime and out of a job. He spent 2004 trying to find his way back to the Majors unsuccessfully, and reportedly begged Nationals’ GM Jim Bowden for a chance before the 2005 season. He was so far off the radar that he wasn’t even listed in the Baseball Prospectus 2005 Annual, which includes profiles on over 1,600 players. If a couple of injuries got Carrasco back to the Bigs for a last hurrah, it would be a nice story, a sort of nostalgia not unlike Carlos Baerga pop up every once in a while. Instead, Carrasco came up on April 21st, sustained minor injuries in a car accident in early May, stayed with the team, and DOMINATED out of the pen for four months. But it gets better. Now 35 years old, Carrasco asked into the starting rotation after injuries depleted the Nats, even though he had never started a game in the major leagues through roughly 600 games played. But it gets even better. According to the Washington Post, Carrasco added a solid changeup to his previous power repertoire (heavy fastball, hard slider, split-finger fastball, according the The Scouting Notebook). Carrasco was outstanding as a starting pitcher, throwing only four innings in his first start, but taking on a normal starter’s workload thereafter going 1-0 in 22.7 IP with only 2 ER, 11 BB, 23 K, 12 H and 1 HR in his first four starts. He gave up 4 ER in his last start, a hopeless cause on the last day of the season, but it doesn’t make the story any less incredible. On top of all of that, Carrasco plans to enter next season as a starting pitcher.

Matt Lawton (25.0, 15.8): After years of seeming like the most competent Twin for several years, Lawton was jettisoned just as they started to win. In fact, his tough luck has continued, just missing the playoffs with the Mets in 2001, spending three rebuilding years in Cleveland from ’02-’04, then finding himself in Pittsburgh in ’05. Midway through the year, a trade to Chicago brightened the postseason outlook, until they collapsed. Then they turned around and spun him off to the Bronx, where the Yankees came from way behind to finally get Lawton into the playoffs… except that he’s not on the postseason roster. Despite that, he seems like the type of player who could thrive as a role player on a very good team, a patient lefty with a little pop and a solid glove in RF. Lawton was at his best with the Twins, but that should come as no surprise as he was traded in the midst of his age 29 season. His decline is natural, he’s not to fault for it, and the Twins are not to credit for it, beyond trading him at the right time.

Conclusion

Cumulative avg VORP with Minnesota: 299.4
Cumulative avg VORP post-Minnesota: 211.5

The gap widens to 279-142.9 if I exclude Ortiz, but I see no reason to do so, since his non-tender was subject to the same systematic analysis as the rest of the decisions. The larger point here is that the Twins have done a pretty good job knowing when to let their players go. Players typically have not blossomed after leaving Minnesota, so I’ve spent roughly 4,000 words disagreeing with J.C. Romero’s off-the-cuff assertion that players succeed after leaving. Romero has to play, though, and I don’t, so I have time to write 4,000 words to disagree with him.

Perhaps a more illustrative approach is to look at the number of players who improved, on the whole, versus those who declined, on the whole:

14 players had a better VORP avg in their last three years with the Twins
8 players had a better VORP avg after leaving the Twins.

Nearly two out of every three players the Twins have let go has been worse after having left. That number impresses me considering the perception that many of the players they lose are due to financial reasons rather than personnel reasons. In other words, Ryan has to tighten the belt from time to time, but he knows just where to punch that new hole in the leather.

One other point of interest is the increasing number of free agents over the last four off-seasons. Minnesota lost virtually no one after the 2001 season: Lawton was traded at the deadline and Carrasco left, but was not signed by anyone for the 2002 season. As the team has won, they have had more turnover, which I attribute primarily to two factors. First, as the team wins, it becomes more expensive to maintain. A .280 hitter on a division winner looks more valuable than a .280 hitter on a cellar dweller. All of the sudden, he’s tenacious, and he does all of the little things that help a team win. As a corollary, the team faces pressure from the hometown fans to maintain the corps of a successful squad (see: Varitek, Jason). Second, the team was very young in 2001, succeeded while entering their collective prime, then dispersed at or near the end of their arbitration years when they got more expensive.

Finally, here is a lineup entirely of players the Twins of jettisoned in the last 4 seasons:

Bobby Kielty, CF
Matt Lawton, RF
David Ortiz, DH
Corey Koskie, 3B
A.J. Pierzynski, C
Doug Mientkiewicz, 1B
Dustan Mohr, LF
Christian Guzman, SS
Denny Hocking, 2B (or Jose Offerman, ugh)

Bench: Henry Blanco, C; Jose Offerman, Util; Buck Buchanan, OF; Mike Restovich, OF

SP: Kenny Rogers
CL: Eddie Guardado