Great post! I love the chase throughout the regular season knowing that post-season is always a crap-shoot (see 1987) but that my Twins will always play hard.

...after they'd just won 43 games. A lot of people criticized that move. The Tigers signed Magglio Ordonez coming off of a 72-win season. A lot of people criticized that move, too. There wasn't too much criticism for those signings after the 2006 season, though.

Building a championship team is a multi-year project, and it's basically impossible to add all of the veterans to the mix in the same offseason. If the Twins truly believe that Nathan will be an effective pitcher for the duration of his contract, then having an elite closer under contract for $11-12M/year is a good thing. Nathan's health is clearly a risk, and it's honestly not the sort of risk I would take, but pouring the money into prospects and hoping everything comes together at the right moment is a risk too.

Basically, I can understand criticism of the contract if people really believe that Nathan will sharply decline, but I don't buy the criticism of the signing just because Nathan is a closer. As a closer, Nathan can be (and has been) a 5-7 win player in a season--regardless of whether the team is good or not--and those wins count just as much as if they came from a position player or a starting pitcher.

I think signing Nathan was probably not the most efficient use of dollars on a wins-per-dollar basis, and those dollars spent differently might have contributed more wins if spent another way.

One interesting explanation given for paying a premium over his actual W/L contributions is the psychological benefit to the young pitchers. The assistant GM who negotiated the contract told Kelly Thesier, the team's official mouthpiece on mlb.com, that a major concern for the Twins was that losing games late hurts the confidence of young players.

I trust their judgment that developing young players requires some psychological nurturing, and I have no doubt this is a real issue. But then you have to look at the opportunity cost of not spending that money elsewhere in psychological terms too. Suppose you spent $12M a year on a slugger instead. Isn't it a great psychological boost when a 3-run homer bails out a young pitcher and gives him a 6-4 win, when having Joe Nathan instead means a 4-3 loss? Ask Matt Cain which he'd rather have, a superstar closer or more run support.

The whole quote is interesting:
http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080324&content_id=2454740&vkey=spt2008news&fext=.jsp&c_id=min)

"Antony, who negotiated the deal with Pepe, said the club felt that keeping Nathan was important for a few reasons. Among those was the fact that the team is entering 2008 with a very young rotation, and the Twins didn't want the team's confidence shaken by losing leads late in ballgames.

The club also didn't want to mess with the current roles for other pitchers in its bullpen, which has been among the best in baseball in recent seasons.

And there was a feeling that after watching other top-tier talent leave the organization, the Twins wanted to try and prevent that from happening with Nathan -- if he indeed wanted to stay."

The last reason just concerns their image with players and fans; in terms of quantifiable contributions to Wins and Losses, it's totally irrelevant, though it may have a psychological impact on the team's play.

The others are all psychological. He mentions a young rotation, and a young team's confidence, and questions whether their other relievers could handle different "roles," which is basically a psychological issue too.

On pure numbers, there's no way the difference in runs prevented with or without Nathan would justify his cost as a percentage of their total budget. Because he pitches in high leverage situations, Nathan's runs disproportionately affect the results of games. But I still think the cost was too high.

But who knows. Maybe the entire team will pitch and hit better knowing he's got their back. We'll see.

The bottom line to me is I'll enjoy having him on the team. Questioning whether hiring Nathan is the most efficient strategy for preventing runs is fun, but not if you let it get in the way of enjoying what you have.

Maybe this didn't need to be so long. If I narrowed it down to single question, how about: which do you think is more important to a young pitcher's confidence, a good closer, or good run support?