Off Day Discussion Topic: "Ace" Blackburn's contract

Mays never had a history of appearing to be a great pitcher when he was coming up through the minors. His 2001 season basically came out of nowhere so even without the injury it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect him to repeat it.

See what Sickels says about Blackburn last fall:

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2008/9/16/614932/analysis-of-twins-rookie-n

Blackburn also never looked like a blue-chipper coming up and he’s still not a dominating pitcher by any means. In fact, his K-rate is down this year.

I’m tickled that he’s doing so well right now, but I pause when asked if I expect him to continue. We need to take a closer look at how he manages to give up so few runs while giving up lots of hits and not striking many batters out and see if he’s truly an outlier pitcher in this regard.

I realize that Mays had injury problems after the Twins gave him that contract, and certainly that was part of the problem. But Mays was absolutely terrible when he wasn’t injured, both before and after the TJ surgery, and the fact remained that at the time of the signing, 2001 was his only good year, and his peripherals were way out of whack with his results, suggesting that he may have been lucky.

Basically, I’m not saying they should have failed to extend him because of the possibility he’d blow out his elbow (although you certainly have to keep that in mind, especially with a pitcher with just one year of great success, since it could be a mechanical change that’s harder on the arm) – I’m saying they should have failed to extend him because he wasn’t really as good as his ERA indicated. I don’t know that his results would’ve been all that much better than they were if he’d been healthy for those four years.

I just don’t think the Twins would be saving enough money in this scenario for it to be worth the trouble. There are too many things playing against the idea.

1: This is the most important one. It’s just never a good idea to offer a multi-year contract on the basis of three months’ work.
2: The “cost certainty” for the Twins isn’t worth enough money. Look at it this way…they’d save more money if they didn’t sign him and Blackburn got hurt, than they’d save by signing him and having him healthy. Even in your scenario laid out above, the Twins aren’t even saving a million dollars. Cost certainty is worth more than a million dollars.
3: We all know what it takes to be successful long-term: the more strikeouts, the fewer the walks, the fewer the home runs, the fewer the base runners, the better off the outlook. Even in these last three months, he’s not elite in these categories. Projectible guys, guys with room to grow into their ceilings, might be looked at for a small deal…but even they wouldn’t be offered to a guy in his second year of serfdom. And Blackburn isn’t “projectible”. He’s a “plateau” type, which means his tools could sharpen, but they won’t get better physically. And this means he needs a track record to prove he can duplicate this kind of a performance. For that we need time, of which three months isn’t enough.

I understand where you’re coming from, because signing Scott Baker to his deal was a really good decision. But Baker’s peripherals are better than Blackburn’s, and even Baker had to wait until his arbitration years before he was offered a long-term contract. I think that’s the best bet for Nick, too. This organization is all about rewarding the guys who came up through the system, but they still need to prove themselves, first.