The First Eight Pack
Posted by SBG on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Welcome to a reprise of Eight Pack, an analysis of the Minnesota Twins offense in 5% chunks of the season. Eight games is about 5% of the season, so a little over every eight games, I'll provide (unless I quit like I did last year) analysis of the Twins offense.
The first eight games of the season included three games against Baltimore, followed by two against the White Sox and three more against the Yankees.
The Twins started the season against the Orioles at home and flashed early signs of offensive firepower, scoring 17 runs in a three game sweep, including a pair of games in which they scored seven runs a piece. The managed only three runs against Daniel Cabrera, but that's not the worst thing that ever happened, much less the worst thing that happened in these eight games, not by a long stretch.
The Twins went to Chicago and played two games of a scheduled three game series in frigid temperatures. Save a three run home run by Justin Morneau in the final game of the series, the Twins were shut out. Of course, that Morneau home run was plenty for the Twins -- they had Johan Santana pitching that day.
The Twins came home to host the Yankees and looked terrible for almost the entire series. The offense was put in early holes in each of the first two games and they "responded" by putting up two and one runs, respectively, in a pair of blowouts. In the final game of the series, we had more of the same, with just one run scored until the eighth inning, in which the Twins finally put together a string of hits and pushed across four runs.
For the eight game stretch, the Twins scored just 28 runs and hit just .244/.314/.343/.657. Yucky! The individual numbers are listed below.
| NAME | G | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | TB | RBI | BB | SO | SB | CS | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Cuddyer | 8 | 29 | 4 | 11 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 4 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 0 | .379 | .419 | .483 | .902 |
| Justin Morneau | 8 | 28 | 5 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 14 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 0 | .250 | .364 | .500 | .864 |
| Torii Hunter | 8 | 28 | 4 | 7 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 15 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 0 | .250 | .300 | .536 | .836 |
| Jeff Cirillo | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .333 | .500 | .333 | .833 |
| Joe Mauer | 8 | 29 | 5 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | .345 | .406 | .414 | .820 |
| Luis Rodriguez | 2 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .400 | .400 | .400 | .800 |
| Jason Kubel | 6 | 15 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | .267 | .353 | .333 | .686 |
| Alexi Casilla | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .333 | .333 | .333 | .667 |
| Luis Castillo | 8 | 32 | 2 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 0 | .281 | .324 | .313 | .636 |
| Nick Punto | 8 | 30 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 1 | 4 | 7 | 0 | 0 | .167 | .265 | .267 | .531 |
| Rondell White | 3 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .111 | .273 | .111 | .384 |
| Jason Tyner | 6 | 11 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | .182 | .182 | .182 | .364 |
| Mike Redmond | 3 | 9 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | .111 | .200 | .111 | .311 |
| Jason Bartlett | 7 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | .050 | .136 | .050 | .186 |
| Chris Heintz | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .000 |
| Josh Rabe | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .000 |
| Totals | 8 | 254 | 28 | 62 | 16 | 0 | 3 | 87 | 26 | 25 | 46 | 8 | 0 | .244 | .314 | .343 | .657 |
Again, this is before game 1 of the Tampa Bay series, in which the Twins got a two run home run from Mike Cuddyer and a walk off home run from Justin Morneau. The theme so far this season is that the big four offensive players -- Mauer, Cuddyer, Morneau, and Hunter are providing all the punch right now. Through eight games, each of those guys have been good, but not outrageously good. Everyone else has pretty much sucked. Someone, somewhere needs to step up. The pirhanas are collectively belly up right now.
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It's obvious: The Twins need to bunt more.
You can approximate walk rate with OBP minus AVG. It's not perfect, but it's simple. Right now the Twins have an approximate walk rate of about .070, and last year they had an approximate walk rate of about .060. So the walks seem to basically be where they were last year. (Which is not great, but not terrible, somewhere near league average.)
Their team power so far has been atrocious--an ISO of .099 so far compared to their already-low .138 ISO from last season (below the league average of .162). Not that this was ever going to be a team based around power, but it's not too much to ask for a few doubles here and there.
The main strength of the team's offense last year was its collective ability to hit for high average, and they haven't done that yet. That seemingly tends to fluctuate more wildly than stuff like power and walks, so I guess it doesn't concern me that much. It's probably bad from a psychological standpoint that we've got so many "piranhas" struggling to get singles right now, but they'll probably be an 8-game stretch sometime in the season where the big boys aren't hitting all that well and the little fishies are making noise.
Oh, for those who are into the whole run scoring thing, the Twins are third from last in the league in runs per game right now at 3.44 R/G, ahead of just the Royals and A's.
I'm a little more caught off guards by this year's Twins pitchers' walk rate. Even accounting for Radke & Liriano no longer around doesn't account for it. Santana is continuing what he had going in spring training; I assume he's still working on conrolling all his pitches yet.
We probably didn't make a big enough deal about this as it was happening, but the Twins' walk rate last season was really, really awesome. Everyone else in the league was between 2.6 BB/G and 3.9 BB/G, with an overall average of 3.2 BB/G, while the Twins were collectively at 2.2 BB/G. That's a pretty huge lead on the rest of the league.
You're right that Radke & Liriano don't totally account for it, and I've been perhaps most concerned about the bullpen walking hitters, but the Twins have at least been league average in walks so far, so it's not been a total disaster.
Put another way, the '05 Twins' walk rate of 2.1 BB/G and the '06 Twins' walk rate of 2.2 BB/G are the two lowest totals in the AL over the last ten years. So as fans, we've recently been pretty lucky from that standpoint.