This team's major weakness was scoring runs.  It was bad at getting runners on base AND it was bad at hitting for power.  Neither problem was much more detrimental than the other.

However, HRs and RBI are not everything, and if that's all you're looking at when you evaluate Batista, you are certainly overvaluing him.  

Batista had to eat up 480 outs to get to 32 HRs in 2004, his last season stateside.  No one, not a single Twins player made that many outs last season.  The closest was Stewart, and he only made 411 outs.

Morneau, in a terrible, terrible year for him, hit 22 HRs in 380 outs.  Give Batista 380 outs, and his HR total goes down to about 25.  So, over the course of a season, we're saying that Batista's power gives him a 3-HR edge on Morneau's 2005 performance, and we're supposed to be impressed with that?

Batista hit .247/.297/.464 with runners on base in 2004, which is about the same as his season line of .241/.272/.455.  So, it's pretty tough to argue that Batista got so many RBI because he was some sort of beast when presented the opportunity to drive in runs.

since we dont.... i say 4.0 sir.

Second, the Twins had a terrible team OBP last season, ahead of only 4 teams, (and only barely ahead of 3 of them), and that was a major factor in their inability to score runs.

To add a guy that will have the effect of LOWERING their already poor team OBP isn't a good idea.  At all.  

To be fair, in theory Batista would also have the effect of improving the team's slugging percentage.  

However, when you are filling positions from the outside to solve perceived weaknesses, it DOES NOT HELP to give the plate appearances to a guy that hurts you in one area at least as much (and I think more) as he helps you in another.  Its that many fewer plate appearances you have to actually improve the offense.

Much better off keeping Cuddyer at third than running Tony Batista out there, something I sincerely hope they aren't planning on doing.  

Nobody denies that Tony Batista can hit homeruns. Those of us that aren't fans of this move argue that the homeruns aren't enough to make up for his weaknesses and make him an asset that is worth actually spending playing time on.  

"Besides, Cuddyer will not play third base. Get over it."

In this thread, and even this entire day, I have not suggested that Cuddyer will play 3B.  I haven't expressed the opinion that it would be a good idea for Cuddyer to 3B.  I haven't even compared Batista to Cuddyer here.  In other threads, I have suggested that at the plate, Cuddyer will be reasonably equivalent to Garciaparra and Piazza next year, but let's keep that discussion in the other thread.  The rest of your comment is otherwise reasonable, though I disagree with it, but going off on me for backing Cuddyer at 3B is ridiculous, especially since I haven't taken that stance.

"Look, the Twins have an abundance of on base guys (Stewart, Castillo, Mauer, Ford, Bartlett, Kubel, Tyner, Rodriguez)."

The league-average OBP in the AL last year was .328.  Stewart (.323) and Bartlett (.316) were below that, although I do expect Bartlett will somewhat improve.  Kubel ought to be good at hitting for power and getting on-base, as long as he gets healthy.  Castillo is legitimately good at getting on base.  Ford is alright at getting on base (.338), but not so good I would call him an on-base guy, maybe that's just being a bit too picky, though.  Tyner is not on the 40-man roster right now, I doubt he'll see more than 40 PAs next season.  Rodriguez is now stuck behind Castillo, so he probably won't get much playing time.

That makes two legit on-base threats (Castillo and Mauer), three guys who are alright at getting on-base, and one guy who might be if he gets healthy and makes a quick adjustment to major league baseball.  I wouldn't call that an "abundance" of on-base guys.

More to the point, I didn't say that the Twins shouldn't be trying to improve the power on their team, in fact I've argued elsewhere today that the Twins should be trying to improve the power on the team.

So, let's get to the part of your post that actually addresses something I said or thought:

"That's like saying Santana has less than minimal value because, if it weren't for all his strikeouts, he'd be giving up a lot of hits."

No, what I'm saying is like saying, if all you look at is Santana's 281 strikeouts, you might be overvaluing him.  (You wouldn't in this case because Santana does a lot more than just strike out a lot of guys.)  Even this isn't a very good analogy to my statements, though, for a number of reasons.

Pitchers have a lot more influence over the number of innings they pitch than hitters have influence over the number of at-bats they get.  A guy like Santana who is effective gets to pitch deeper into ballgames than guys who are ineffective.  So, they are more in control over accumulating big counting stats.

A hitter, though, is at the mercy of his manager for where he hits in the lineup, and his fellow players, depending on how many outs they make, for how many times he gets to hit in a game.  That's why I think it's important that if you want to bring out stats like, Batista hit 30+ HRs so many times, while our guys didn't, you have to take a look at how many opportunities they were given.

What I'm saying here is that Batista isn't much better at hitting home runs than Morneau was last season.  And that's pretty much all Batista brings to the plate with him.  And like I said, if that's mainly what you consider, you're overvaluing him, because the other parts of his hitting game are really pretty bad.  (Unlike the would-be Santana analogy where the other parts of Santana's game are good.)

Considering that Batista is an out-machine, I don't think that's enough power to consider him a huge asset.  His bat has more than minimal value, but I don't think it's much more than minimal.

No, it's not like that at all. Santana, largely because of his strikeouts, effectively keeps runs off the board. Meanwhile Batista, even WITH his homers, does not effectively help his team score runs. In fact, an entire team of Batistas in 2004 would be expected to score 4.10 runs per game; the Twins in 2005 scored 4.24 runs per game whilst giving a thousand precious ABs to nobodies like Abernathy, Rivas, Punto and Redmond. Pathetic.

And Cuddyer hasn't even had ONE full year of opportunity, let alone four; last year was the first time he got anything like regular playing time, and his performance was league-average (98 OPS+), something Batista hasn't managed since 2002. He's already better than Batista, and can expect to keep spreading the gap.

Batista "consistently knocks in runs" because he has, in the past, consistently come up with runners on base. He doesn't even hit well with runners on (look at 2004; something like .233/.283/.470, only slightly better than his awful overall numbers). If he gets 100 RBI this year, it will be a BAD thing; he's batting behind guys who are getting on base a lot, and for the most part probably stranding them, when we should have a better hitter in that spot.

Cuddyer may well play third base. There's no reason to completely count it out. And it will be at least as bad if both Cuddyer AND Batista are on the field, becuase that means no Kubel. It's just bad news all around.

From Dave Campbell's report

"Batista's deal is not guaranteed. If he's released before opening day, he would get only 30 or 45 days of termination pay -- not the full $1.25 million."  

If the guy can't hit in spring training there's a good chance he won't be on the team.  

And he learned nothing in Japan. His OBP over there (as I saw it posted somewhere else) was .294, and we know now that you can adjust Japanese power hitters' stats downward across the board...since he hit only 27 homers there, I think we're in for a disappointment if we even expect him to match his previous, pathetic level of play.  

Batista: .251/.298/.458
Jones: .279/.327/.455

I'd say that Batista hits for significantly more power than Jones, when you consider that their career isolated slugging (ISO) is .207 vs. .176, in Batista's favor.  Batista isn't as good as Jones, but he's not so much worse that he's going to kill our offense.  Having the 3B/RF situation next year be Batista/Cuddyer as opposed to Cuddyer/Jones last year maybe costs us 10 or so runs, but also costs about $4M less.  So, depending on what that $4M does, it might improve the team somewhat.  (That is, it might be running in place, but it is cheaper running in place this way.)

As for his glove, Clay Davenport's DT defensive stats have Batista quite a bit above average, and tangotiger's UZR from 2000-2003 has him right about average.  Looking at his scouts, inc. defense scouting report, he sounds like a solid, if unspectacular fielder.  And if there's anything I tend to support the Twins' evaluation of, it's defense, so I'm guessing Batista will be fine in the field.

"Of the three broad skill categories (hitting, pitching, and defense), defense is the most easily obtained."

What is this based off of?  

A .271 batting average with good defense is all I need from my SS.  

That is all.  

Focusing now on the scoring runs aspect, how does a team increase scoring? Well, hitting home runs seems like a good idea.  If we look back at history, do teams that hit more home runs score more runs over the course of a season?  Statistically, the answer is yes . . . somewhat.  There is a decidedly positive correlation between total HR and total Runs Scored.  To be rigorous, we should do the actual calculation of the coefficient, but I'm lazy, so I simply sort the 2005 team offenses by HR total, and note that the teams at the top of the list tend to score more runs than the teams at the bottom of the list.

But I also note that the correlation isn't exactly great.  For example, Cleveland hit 207HR and Boston hit 199HR, yet Boston scored a whopping 120 more runs on the season (aside: it's instructive to note that I've just cherry-picked an anecdote here.  It's important to understand, though, that I'm not using the anecdote to argue the point.  Rather, I'm using it to illustrate a point that I can prove using rigorous mathematics).

So - hitting home runs is good, but clearly there are other factors that play into scoring runs.  Are there any metrics that better correlate with scoring runs than HR totals?  Again, we should do some actual statistical analysis here, but let's be lazy and play with MLB's sortable team stats a bit.  If you sort by batting average, you will note that you get a somewhat better accounting of runs scored.  Boston lead the majors in runs score, and also in team batting average.  Likewise, Yankees are #2 in both categories.

Continue in this manner, and you find that even better than BA and HR are OBP and SLG.  And, best of all the traditional metrics:  OBP + SLG = OPS.  Looking across history, we find that the on-field metric that best correlates with scoring runs is OPS (disregarding advanced metrics).

Now, we make two intuitive leaps.  First leap: if team OPS drives run scoring, and team performance is the sum of all individual performances, than players with higher OPS will increase team run scoring ability.  Second leap: Tomorrow's baseball game will be played similarly to yesterday's baseball game (in other words, baseball possesses historical continuity).

With this in mind, is Batista's impact on Twins run scoring ability more accurately measured by his above-average 30HR power or his league-averagish .756 career OPS?

An important part of Batista's contract is that the $1.25M is not guaranteed.  If he doesn't make the team out of spring training, then the Twins are only on the hook for $300K or so of the contract.  That really makes Batista look like an insurance policy more than anything else.  That the Twins have an insurance policy might somewhat increase their leverage in trade talks with Texas.

I don't know...kudos to him if he's actually trying, but there have just been enough of those deals (the worst of which being this signign) to make me think that try as he might, he's never going to get it.

What is interesting to me is how many of the people writting on these blogs show absolutely no respect to someone has earned it from all of us.  Do you show this little respect to anyone you disagree with or is it because you suspect Mr. Ryan may be wealthy?

Lastly, many people keep complaining about his releasing David Ortiz.  If I recall, Ortiz hadn't accomplished much with the Twins and was often injured.  He also wasn't able to get anyone to sign him until shortly before the following spring training when the Red Sox took a chance.  I suspect many fans in Boston at that time thought about that signing much like you think about the Batista signing...it is horrible.  (By the way, I am not saying that I think Batista will do anything similar to what Ortiz has done in Boston)