Winter meetings, Day One

The Twins reportedly lined up on Monday the return of Matt Capps, which was their big news from the first day of the winter meetings.

The initial Internet response to the well-telegraphed signing is predictably negative.

I'm not enthused, but I'm hardly outraged by the move either. As I've said before, my concern is that the bullpen be deep enough that Ron Gardenhire doesn't wreck his few good arms through overwork. Capps alone doesn't do that, but his presence does deepen the bullpen.

One of the common threads to the objections raised by my blogging brethren —  which I shared in my initial post — is that the Twins are bypassing a compensatory draft pick. Terry Ryan's response to that factor, from the Strib story:

Ryan said compensation picks don't factor much into the Twins' decisions on players. "We'll take it," Ryan said, "but we'd rather have the player."

I don't believe for a moment that the Twins don't take the value of compensation picks into serious consideration. Their historic reluctance to give up first round picks to sign Type A free agents is evidence of that.

But I wonder if they are uncertain today of the real value of those picks under the new labor agreement and the formalized, enforceable restrictions on spending. I haven't seen any explanation of how the spending ceilings are to be set, but if the ceilings are too low, it may be difficult to get high school prospects to sign— which will push teams to overdraft collegians and thin out the quality choices by the time the sandwich picks come up.

If that's a realistic possibility, then Ryan has a good point about preferring the player to the pick. Draft picks are hardly a sure thing.

Pedro Florimon hit .267/.344/.367
at Double A Bowie in 2011.

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In a lower profile move, the Twins claimed shortstop Pedro Florimon on waivers from Baltimore.

I don't understand the Florimon pickup. That doesn't make it bad. It just means that it's not transparent enough for me to understand.

Florimon is a switch-hitter, turns 25 on Saturday, and got an eight at-bat cuppa in September. He is said to be fast (although his minor-league stolen base stats don't impress) and struggle with breaking balls. He's been bouncing around between A and AA ball in the Baltimore system for a while, and 2011 was pretty clearly his best season at the plate.

My guess is that he's Triple A fodder rather than a threat to make the 25-man roster. But the Twins saw fit to fill one of their 40-man roster spots with him. I don't know what they have in mind. I doubt he's better than Brian Dozier.

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Ron Santo didn't live
long enough to see his
election to the Hall.

As of now, the Florimon pickup gives the Twins 39 players on the 40-man roster. If/when the Capps signing becomes official, the roster will be full, and if the Twins intend to do something in the Rule V draft Thursday — they have the second pick — they'll have to clear a spot. They've picked up so many marginal players on waivers since the last week or so of the regular season (Esmerling Vazquez, Matt Maloney, Jeff Gray, Florimon) that I wouldn't think it that difficult to do.

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Ron Santo made the Hall of Fame, which is OK by me. Jim Kaat came one vote shy of getting in; that's also OK. Tony Oliva got eight votes, four votes short of what he needed. Unless the Hall changes the Veterans Committee system (again), Oliva and Kaat will be eligible for consideration again in 2014.

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Rumor mill (and my reactions):

• LaVelle Neal said Monday that there's a growing expectation that Michael Cuddyer will re-sign with the Twins (makes sense to me). 
• Ken Rosenthal said the Twins are one of four teams who have made an offer to Mark Buehrle (someone else will actually sign him).
• Rhett Bollinger (MLB.com) said the Twins have a tentative meeting on Thursday with Josh Willingham's agent, apparently as a Plan B on Cuddyer (Cuddyer makes a lot more sense for the Twins for a variety of reasons).
• ESPN Deportes says the Twins have "expressed interest" in Carlos Guillen (as if they need more guys who can't stay off the DL).

Tony-O, Kitty Kaat and the Hall of Fame

One of the myriad happenings next week at the Winter Meeting will be the balloting by the current version of the Veterans Committee.

The Hall of Fame's grand poo-baas keep tinkering with the Veterans Committee, trying to achieve a system that

• actually elects somebody
• without succumbing to the cronyism that has periodically infected the VC.

It's probably a hopeless mission. The biggest problem here is that the most obvious candidates get swept in by the writers and never reach the Veterans Committee, which winds up trying to split the hairs between Jim Kaat and Tommy John. There are plenty of HoF inductees I consider mistakes; almost all of them came courtesy of the VC.

The panel next week will be picking from a specific, prescreened, list of players and executives from a specific era of the game. Chris Jaffe at the Hardball Times website predicts that Ron Santo will get in, and thinks it likely that at least one of Tony Oliva and Kaat will as well, although Jaffe is quick to concede that it's difficult to make a good prediction on the VC when the rules keep changing.

Santo, Oliva, Kaat, Gil Hodges --- these are the most likely choices. My sense of it is that there are several worse players at their positions already inducted, I wouldn't whine much if these four remain out, and I won't complain at all if any get in.

Well, Santo ... I'm about 95 percent sure he should be in. Third base is rather unrepresented in the Hall, and there are only about five or six third basemen in history with better credentials. (Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Wade Boggs, Eddie Mathews ... Bill James puts Santo ahead of Brooks Robinson, but it's clear that their contemporaries thought Brooks was much the better player.)

My only issue with putting Santo in the Hall is that the Cubs of his era have Billy Williams at the top of his game, they have Ferguson Jenkins at the top of his game, they have a fading but still useful Ernie Banks, they have solid regulars in Glenn Beckert, Don Kessinger, Randy Hundley, Jim Hickman, Johnny Callison, they have Ken Holtzman, Milt Pappas and Bill Hands backing Jenkins in the rotation, they have a HofF manager in Leo Durocher -- and what did they win? Nothing. Not even a divisional title. How many legit Hall of Famers can you assemble without winning anything?

The Twins of Oliva and Kaat's era are a bit of a disappointment too, but they have a pennant and a pair of divisional titles to show. They had the misfortune to be up against an historically great Baltimore Orioles assembly.

I wrote a column long ago about Oliva and Kaat and the Hall. They symbolize a dual approach to HoF voting on the part of the electorate. The writers like career length from hitters and really high peaks from pitchers. Oliva had an eight-year span in which he was about as good a hitter as you'd find. The writers felt that wasn't enough. Kaat had a great season and a lot of good ones and lasted a long time. The writers felt that wasn't enough.

Kaat's candidacy is hurt a bit by the fact that in his prime years there was only one Cy Young awarded for the two leagues, and when he won 25 games in 1966 Sandy Koufax got the award. They started giving out two Cy Youngs the very next season. Put a Cy Young on Kitty's resume, and I think the writers would have given his candidacy more play.

Ron Santo and the Hall of Fame

Ron Santo (10) made a habit in 1969  of clicking his heels
after a Cubs victory. Then came their famous September
fade; they finished second to the Miracle Mets.

Ron Santo — third baseman, broadcaster, diabetes patient/example — died Thursday night.

The subhed on the Chicago Tribune story linked above — Chicago Cubs icon failed to reach Hall of Fame — is both accurate and a reminder that for some players, not making the Hall of Fame is a bigger deal than being inducted.

Ron Santo led the NL
twice in on-base percentage
in an era when almost
nobody knew what it was.

Enos Slaughter, for example. A very good outfielder in the 1940s and '50s, his supporters finally got him inducted. But it was the exclusion that kept him remembered. Once he was in, nobody had much reason to talk or write about him.

Santo is, and has been, deserving of induction. About a decade ago Bill James ranked Santo as the sixth greatest third baseman of all time — ahead of Brooks Robinson, Paul Molitor, far ahead of Pie Traynor.

Santo's numbers are not so easily interpreted. Yes, his career was centered in the mid '60s-early '70s, a period in which conditions deeply favored power pitchers and worked against hitters. He also had the benefit of an outstanding hitters park for most of his career.

It wasn't all that long a career (15 seasons), and his walks — he led the National League four times in the category — weren't valued then as they would be today.

That's part of why he's not in. Also a factor, I suspect, is this: His Cubs teams also featured Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins at the top of their games and the fading Ernie Banks; all three are in Cooperstown. They had a Hall of Fame manager in Leo Durocher. They had top-flight regulars in Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert and Randy Hundley in the lineup, strong starting pitchers in Bill Hands, Ken Holtzman and Milt Pappas, good relief pitchers in Phil Regan and Ted Abernathy.

They never won the World Series, never reached the World Series, never so much as won a division title.

Durocher, in his self-serving but entertaining autobiography, puts a big part of the blame on Santo:

When I took over the club I looked upon Santo as one of my great assets ... But right from the first, other baseball men whom I respected began to tell me that I was never going to win a pennant with him. ... Five runs ahead and he'd knock in all the runs I could ask for. One run behind and he was going to kill me. They were right.

There's a limit to how much I trust Durocher, and his critique of Santo is very much like the current rap on Alex Rodriguez. Still, I have to wonder: If Santo's a Hall of Famer (and I'm inclined to believe he should be) that's three prime-of-career HoFers on that team. Where are the trophies?