Bill Smith Hates The Twins

If you don't know who Bill Smith is, you probably won't care enough to continue reading this.

I'm not going to list all of the asinine moves that Bill Smith has made since he took over for the (soon to be sainted) Terry Ryan. The Johan Santana trade and the Delmon Young trade stand out as unmitigated disasters. Today, I intend to rant about the Matt Capps trade. The extent of Joe Mauer's injuries this year were unexpected, but even in the absolute best case scenario, Joe Mauer is going to catch 140 games. 110-130 is more likely. Going into the season with the only other option being a pair of Mendoza-quality hitters seems... stupid. Asinine even.

Part of my level of hatred for the Matt Capps deal is that I have watched him suck for three teams. In 2006, I moved to Pittsburgh. The following summer, Capps started closing for the Pirates. In a word, he sucked. Even when he didn't completely suck, he wasn't great. At best, he was an average closer who couldn't miss bats. I'm pretty sure I saw the last remaining Pirates fan have a heart attack watching Matt Capps attempt to close out a game. He had a terrible year in 2009, and the Pirates said 'don't bother coming back, we don't want you'. And they got precisely nothing in return. A reasonable estimate of Matt Capps worth. Around this time, I got a new fellowship and moved to Washington, DC. Low and behold, so did Matt Capps! I could continue watching him suck... on basic cable. I have never been a fan of either team, but I had--and have--sympathy for fans of both franchises. Watching Matt Capps stomp on those fans' hopes and dreams was never fun. Of course, Bill Smith had to turn sympathy into misery by trading away the best Twins catching prospect, and good trade bait, for said reliever.

Quick aside: with rare exceptions, relievers are hit or miss in any given year. The Twins have, laudably, been loathe to give relievers long term deals for exactly this reason (JC Romero ring a bell to anyone?). However, having a guy on the staff that has reasonable numbers to come in for $1-3 million and potentially suck or potentially not suck can often be a good deal. Washington overpaid for Capps a little ($3.5), but I get it. In fact, if the Twins signed Capps as a free agent and were paying him $3.5, I would be patting Bill Smith on the back.

Of course, that is not what happened. Bill Smith gave up the best prospect (at the time) in the Twins system, Wilson Ramos. He has a .698 OPS while playing passable defense as a catcher. For perspective, two data points: average catcher OPS this decade .660. Twins catchers OPS this year .512. There exist formulae to quantify what a .186 difference in OPS is worth, but I'm too drunk to find it right now.

Let us not forget that Wilson Ramos is not the only player plying his trade outside of the North Star State because Capps is on the roster. JJ Hardy also had to be cleared off the payroll for Matt Capps bloated $7.1 million salary. Let us compare JJ Hardy this year to Alexi Casilla this year*. JJ Hardy: 52 games .886 OPS. Alexi Casilla: 72 games .664 OPS. Even with the injury, JJ Hardy has been much, much more productive at the plate and has also provide quality defense at short stop. We are not going to mention how the player the twins 'traded' JJ Hardy for, Jim Hoey, has provided the team with negative value.

Back to my basic point: Bill Smith hates the Twins. One of Bill Smith's first moves was to trade away Johan Santana to the Mets. That trade looked terrible for a couple of years. By some accident, the trade ended up not looking terrible for a minute last year because the Twins ended up with Jon Rauch and JJ Hardy because of that deal. Trading for Matt Capps reversed all of that in a single player. Matt Capps replaced Jon Rauch while giving basically the same numbers (102 ERA+ v. 108 ERA+) with a much larger salary ($3.5 v $7.1) which pushed one of the best shortstops in the game out the door. Apparently, in spite of himself, Bill Smith managed to get some value out of a trade from his first year. This had to be rectified. I think Bill Smith is doing a good job running one of the most excellent organizations in all of sports straight into the ground.

* Whether or not Nishioka would have otherwise been acquired is up for debate, and he hasn't played in enough games to make any kind of comparison.