Over the course of the next month or so, I intend to analyze the 2004 Twins players one by one. I don't know if I'll analyze every single player, but certainly I'll try to analyze all of the significant contributors to the team.

In the course of my analysis of position players, I will look at five categories: offense, defense, durability, salary situation and intangibles (a catch all what the SB & G thinks category). I will then summarize the player's season and try to project their future. Hope you stop by enjoy the series. Comments are welcome!

Note: GPA is gross production average. It is (1.8*OBP + Slugging)/4. It provides a better weight to on base percentage than OPS. It is scaled so that when a fan reads it, he can correlate it to a batting average. In other words, a GPA of .300 is good.

STICK AND BALL GUY'S 2004 TWINS ANALYZER
Justin Morneau 6'4" 228 Lbs. Age: 23 L/R 1B				Morneau
AVE: .271	OBP: .340	SLG: .536	GPA: .287
G: 74	AB: 280	HR: 19	RBI: 58

Offense:
Morneau had a very nice half season with the bat. His home runs and RBI totals, projected over a full season, are the type of numbers not achieved by a Twins player since Harmon Killebrew. Offensively, Morneau has a chance to be the best Twins slugger since the Killer. I've been calling him Li'l Harmon for lack of a better name. A guy this good needs a nickname.

What's even more encouraging is that Morneau tailed off after he was hit by a pitch on the hand by C.C. Sabathia. In other words, he could have been even better had he not been battling a sore hand. He's got a chance to be great.

Among AL first basemen with at least 250 plate appearances, Morneau was third in slugging percentage, behind only David "Papi" Ortiz and Mark Teixeira and just ahead of Carlos Delgado and Paul Konerko. Add in the NL and he's sixth, trailing Albert Pujols, Todd Helton, and Jim Thome. In other words, Li'l Harmon is playing with the big boys even at a young age. (By the way, Doug Mientkiewicz was last in the AL and second to last in the majors.) Along with his 19 home runs, Li'l Harmon hit 17 doubles. Nearly 1/2 of his 76 hits were for extra bases. Nice.

Even with these lofty slugging numbers, there is room for improvement. Morneau simply doesn't get on base often enough. His batting average and on base percentage are right at the league average. He drew just 28 walks, which is about half as many as I would like to see. He also struck out 54 times, which isn't terrible, but is a little high. If Morneau had converted 28 of his outs into walks, his numbers would look like this: .302/.429/.595. This would leave Morneau with a 1.024 OPS and a GPA of .342. Having seen him bat often enough, I think he could have done this with a little more plate discipline, specifically by laying off fastballs that were up and out of the strikezone. In fact, if Morneau would lay off of the high strike, he probably would have even more impressive numbers than I projected. If pitchers were forced to keep the ball down, he would have had a lot more pitches that he could handle and drive.

In 72 games at AAA this year, Morneau batted .306/.377/.615 with 22 home runs, 32 walks, and 47 strikeouts in 288 at bats. His major league numbers are not that far away from these numbers. Again, he did not walk a whole lot at AAA. In his minor league career, he walked 195 times and had 1867 at bats, virtually the same ratio of walks to at bats (.104:1) as he had at the majors this year (.100:1). This seems to indicate that he probably won't improve all that much. Let's hope he does, because if he does, watch out.

Defense:
Morneau's reputation was that he couldn't play defense. The Delusional Blowhard that played first for the Twins before Morneau stated famously that the trade that shipped him out (and, incidentally got him a World Series ring) would "come back to bite" the Twins because of Morneau's defense. Guess what. Mr. Blowhard was wrong, leaving Twins fans to draw two conclusions. One, defense out of the first baseman is not that important. Two, Morneau can play a passable first base. Stick and Ball Guy was an amateur first baseman himself. What he can tell you is that picking errant throws out of the dirt is not that tough. In fact, it's relatively easy. Morneau can pick throws and at 6'4" he presents a much larger target than Mr. Blowhard.

Morneau had a Zone Rating of .816, which he qualified, would be next to last among qualifying first baseman (those who played at least 2/3 of the games at first base, 11 qualified in the American League). Zone Rating is the percentage of balls fielded in a player's zone, that is, of all the balls hit near a player, how many did that player field. Morneau fielded 81.6%. The best in the league, Tino Martinez, fielded 87.8%. Mr. Blowhard fielded 85.1%. What this means is Morneau cost the Twins a couple of ground ball hits by playing first base. When I say "a couple" I mean a few, like 5 or so. Big deal. Range is everything in the middle infield. It doesn't mean that much at first.

I'd like to see him work on his footwork a little bit. I thought that he was a little clumsy sometimes, but he was far from an embarrassment.

Durability:
Morneau missed a few games with a bad hand, courtesy of Sabathia. He didn't seem to have any other injuries.

Salary Situation:
He's not eligible for arbitration or free agency. The Twins can pay him next to nothing, relatively speaking right now.

Intangibles:
This kid is big and strong. He's 23 years old. In 1959, when he was 23, Killebrew played in his first full season. He hit .242/.354/.516 with 42 dingers in 546 at bats. Killer was much more patient at the plate, walking 90 times (a ratio of .165:1). Morneau's numbers compare very favorably with Killer's. Even at 23, he reaches base at a rate similar to the average major leaguer. He has tremendous power (his slugging percentage is 100 points higher than the league average). If he can must up a little more plate discipline (a trait sadly lacking in a number of Twins hitters) he can be a very special player in this league.

Prediction:
Barring injury, I foresee big things for Morneau in 2005. I think he'll be the first Twin in 18 years to hit 30 home runs in a season and could be the first Twin not named Harmon Killebrew to hit 40. I really don't care how well he plays defensively, it's all about his at bats. If he can learn not to expand his strikezone, he can very well be a 500 home run guy in the future. The sky is the absolute limit.