Your statistics are worthless because they don't factor in any of the following:

Grittiness
Mis-cutting throws
Professional At-bat %

Good read, even if it paints some painfully ugly pictures, particularly the quickly plummeting Castro.

70 wins. Tops.

I'm still a little worried about Stewart. His strikeout rate is about where it's been during his career, which was about the same as last year, so that's not particularly alarming.

But, he's still walking a lot less than his career average, though better than last year:

BB/PA
2005--0.053
2006--0.063
Car---0.078

Also, he's got a measly 3 extra base hits so far this season:

XBH/PA
2005--0.0726
2006--0.0411
Car---0.0900

That was a pretty big dropoff last year, and it's really severe so far. Stewart's not going to hit 0.387 on balls in play all season (career rate .327, last season .301) and when his average drops, his OBP is going to drop with it, and it really doesn't look like he'll be offering much in the way of power to offset that drop. I think he's a good candidate to regress and hit the .280/.330/.400 or so the rest of the way out, like PECOTA projected.

Despite the fact that 22.2% of the balls that he puts in play are infield flies (second on the team to Nick Punto’s 28.6%), he’s hitting a robust .316 on balls that he puts into play. That’s incredible luck. I’m not sure he’ll have an OPS over .500 this season.

I'm looking for a clarification on this one--are you saying that he's lucky to be hitting that high for his BABIP because of the number of infield pop-ups he's hit?

Also, where are you getting your GB/FB/LD/POP data? I realize there's something of a subjective element to this data still, but the Baseball Prospectus numbers differ significantly from the numbers you state for Punto. They have a 13.6% popup rate for Punto and a 6.3% popup rate for Castro, which puts Castro towards the middle of the pack on the team. BP's numbers have Castro as an extreme groundball htiter, at 56%, about tied with Elrod, and a little behind Castillo's 66% for the team lead.

As I recall, BABIP on groundballs is higher than BABIP for flyballs, so if you trust the Baseball Prospectus numbers, it might sort of make sense why Castro has such a high BABIP so far. (Not that I in any way advocate Castro as the everyday shortstop.)

Also, looking further at the BP batted ball type data, (they added this new for this year, so I'm pretty excited to have it available) Punto and Castro are leading the team in line drive percentage, with Punto at 32% and Castro at 23%. This greatly surprises me. Punto only has 22 balls-in-play so far, so that's pretty obviously a weird fluctuation. And Castro likely can't keep this up, either. If it makes you feel any better, Mauer and Stewart are both right on Castro's tail at 22%. And line drives are clearly the hardest balls-in-play to catch, so that would definitely explain Castro's BABIP. Wierd.

This was a great read SBG, the Rondell bit cracked me up.

The Twins are currently down 15-1 as I speak after a 9-0 loss last night... this team is laughably bad. Ron Gardenhire needs to stop sitting on his ass and acting like everything is going to work itself out. The Twins are playing worse than any team in the league right now, and major changes need to be made before the season is totally lost.

By the way, I'm sorry for all my anti-Cuddyer banter. I really don't dislike the guy as much as I let on, sometimes I just bash him to get a rise out of you guys... I know it can on your nerves though.

This team might be worse than it looks on the stat sheet right now, which is almost as amazing as how bad Rondell's VORP is.

Our relief pitchers should punch the left side of our defense in the face. They've given too many extra outs the past couple games.

And the whole team should punch Radke and Silva.

ubelmann -- clarification on the Castro thing. I was saying that he's lucky that his BABIP is as high as it is because he pops up so much. Pretty much everything else besides the pop ups are falling in. I got that data from the Hardball Times. Everything else came from BP. I didn't look at Castro's LD%, but I've heard that about 75% of line drives fall in for hits. His Line Drives, though, are hit about 115 feet.

Nick -- we're passionate about this team. Losing angers us or at least I know that it angers me. I have been absolutely furious about their play. I know I woke up very angry about last night's performance. And, um, today's performance. Wow. Glad I was out with Lucy running errands.

And I laughed for about ten minutes after I thought up the "Tilt." line. I told Lucy that if this team doesn't entertain me then I'll entertain myself by writing about them. Which I did today.

Whiffers.

I forgot to include statistics about playing their tails off.

Oh, and everybody, this month's play has been one long April Fools Joke. I hope my little prank didn't anger you as much as this shit has.

SBG - don't forget the "battling" multiplier. Torii battles for two pitches per AB, so that counts for something.

Tough to think about what can be done besides just waiting it out and hope that something good happens. It isn't like we can send down (or release) 6 guys or anything.

It's hard to write a season off at the end of April, but it's pretty clear that that the Twins are in danger of absolutely losing contact with the field. Ruben Sierra got hurt today and is probably done. We'll see what they do to replace him.

If there's any bright side to this, it might cause TR to do something bold, like tell Gardy that Bartlett and Kubel are getting called up and need to play every day, and if they aren't playing every day, then Gardy doesn't need to show up any more. Or something like that. Maybe.

At any rate, we still get to watch Santana once every 5-6 days, and (at this rate) soon we'll see Liriano once every 5-6 days, too.

Nice job, SBG. I can't get over how horrible White has been...

Excellent post, but I assume everything is fixed cause Gardy is upset and called a closed door meeting. Assume he yelled at Cuddy, LRod, Lew and Francisco...cause we all know they are the problem!

My suggestion is Stewart to DH, Kubel up and in LF, Cuddyer in RF, Ford as 4th OF...then to center in July when Torii goes in a trade, Bartlett up and at short with Castro to reserve status, Rondell to the scrap heap, and Ruben to the infirmary! Send Liriano to AAA for 3 starts then back and in the rotation...to replace anyone except Santana or Baker.

If they won't do that, keep Santana, Baker, Liriano and Nathan and call up the Red Wings!

If Ryan thought that Kubel and Bartlett should be playing everyday they would have already have been in the lineup. The same goes for Liriano in the rotation. Ryan is as much to blame for this mess as Gardenhire. The Twins have not been built to compete with elite teams. As much fun as it has been to watch the Twins be competitive, (in a very weak division previously) they simply lack the complete all-around talent to seriously contend. The Ryan/Pohlad philosophy is not working and will not work.

Secondly, they show so much disdain for true statistical analysis as an organization they are prone to mis-diagnosing their problems. Their manager is the same caliber as most of their players - second rate. Unlike Beane in Oakland - Tery Ryan is petrified of making any bold strokes even when the evidence in front of his face dictates he should be bold. They need to fire a few people in the front office and bring in some fresh blood.

Third, they have an irrational policy toward veterans which translates into they never embarass a guy publicly when he should be called out (Hunter and Stewart that means you). They will not DH Stewart because he thinks he can't hit if he's not playing in left field. He can't afford to sit Hunter -he's paid too much. And as an organization, it would be too embarrasing to bench White or "Fatista"

They seem to have a knack for picking decent players out of the scrapheap but they have no clear organizational philosophy for developing offensive talent. They have regressed this year in that they pinned their hopes on a bunch of second rate free agents. Morneau - might has well throw him in the same scrapheap as David McCarty and all the washouts they've had at first since Kent Hrbek.

Radke - send him to the DL-he's got nuthin'. Loshe - I'm tired of hearing how good his stuff is -let some other team deal with his maddening inconsistency. Hunter - let some other team pay this buffoon $10 million to hack at first pitches while totally wasting his talent. Morneau - how about a sending message instead of stroking his tender ego. This is the big leagues - it ain't Babe Ruth.

Unfortunately, this is shaping up to be a collapse of Timberwolves' proportions. While I'm at it - Dick Bremer must go. I'm tired of this milquetoast hack. For that matter - let's nuke all the broadcast teams and get some folk in there who will call a spade a spade. Outside of Santana and Mauer this squad is a joke and barely worth watching.

Tery Ryan is petrified of making any bold strokes even when the evidence in front of his face dictates he should be bold.

How about trading an established 130+ games/year, near .300 hitting catcher who is a solid defender for a set-up man that you're going to thrust into the closer's role, a guy who threw 9 innings as a 19-year old, thanks to injury, and a guy named Boof who walked a batter every other inning in AA, all while you hope your hot-shot catching prospect can skip AAA altogether?

How about trading your just-healed hard-throwing left-handed starter for a utility player and a relief pitcher that you think can be moved to the starting rotation?

And to a lesser extent, how about trading a young, arbitration-eligible outfielder for an older, more experienced, more expensive outfielder who doesn't improve the long-term outlook, but makes the team better in the near-term?

Oh, I'm sorry though, I forgot--Terry Ryan never does anything bold. Right, sure.

What makes be even more livid is the repeated comments from Sid and TR that Poland will approve a signing of a player that will make differnce. Yeah right!!! You aging piece of crap. This is the same guy that has forclosed on nearly every family in Minnesota at one time or another and he going to die with $2,000,000,000+ What an SOB. He should be very publicly telling Ryan to go out there with $100M budget. Telling him, i want another World Series Champion before I go!!! But no, we need three players over the winter and we got one. RonDL and Batista are a joke. The remind me of the late 90's when we went out and got Dave Hollins as a solution to our woes. Unless we intended to trade these stiff's at the trade deadline for whatever we can get (like Hollins). And if that is the case, then they knew this team was going to suck, because they didn't care to do anything about it.

If they refuse to shit-can the dipshit manager, its obviously an organization that is asleep at the wheel. Much like their owner.

Thus I think its an ownership issue as much as anything.

ubelmann,

TR traded A.J. because he was about to get a $3m raise in arbitration, the club had its Golden Boy coming up to take his place, and immediately after the deal the organization wasn't shy about letting everyone know they thought A.J. had to go. Gardy even blamed A.J. for turning umpires against the team.

Eric Milton was a salary dump. TR got a middle reliever and utilityman for Milton, not because that was such a bold choice, but that was the market value for a pitcher who had missed a year rehabbing from knee surgery, posted a 4.84 ERA (91 ERA+) the year before that, and had one year left on his contract at $9 million.

And TR traded Kielty because the club had simply given up on him. He got good value in the deal because he found a trading partner looking to dump a veteran, who overrated Kielty's abilities and future career prospects. If Terry Ryan believed in Bobby Kielty, there's no way he gets traded for Stewart in 2003. Terry Ryan never trades anybody until he's sure the player is no longer useful to his team.