The WGOM

The Second Eight Pack

April 21st, 2007

Welcome to the second edition in 2007 of Eight Pack, an analysis of the Minnesota Twins offense in 5% chunks of the season. In case you don’t know, this is categorized in an archive known as “Eight Pack”, to which there is a link above. If you want to go back and read previous entries (I don’t know why – perhaps I said something stupid before or you have insomnia). Eight games is about 5% of the season, so a little over every eight games, I'll provide analysis of the Twins offense.

My intention here is to recap the last eight games and also to show what is happening with the Twins over the season. Thanks to the contributions of others, I can concentrate on doing these types of projects without the burden of providing the type of content I want the WGOM to have on a regular basis.

The Twins have now played sixteen games. The second eight game chunk of the season included four games against the D:\Rays, three against Seattle, and one against the 2007 World Champion Kansas City Royals and soon-to-be league MVP John Buck.

Let’s go to the numbers.

The Importance of Scoring Runs
Well, duh. You have to score to win. So, teams that score a lot of runs, given an average pitching staff, will probably win a lot of games. As W. Edwards Deming once said, however, “A little knowledge of variation can be useful.” Here is a table showing how scoring a specific number of runs affects the probability of winning. The data here is culled from Baseball Prospectus’s Record by Team Runs data. Because it is league wide, it assumes average pitching. I didn’t separate out National League values because of the relatively low number of games played so far and I don’t have a park adjustment. Come on. I have a life.

Runs Scored	Win Probability
1	0.037
2	0.250
3	0.394
4	0.456
5	0.611
6	0.735
7	0.821
8+	0.972

That second run of the game is the most crucial one, you could argue, because it does the most to improve your chances of winning.
Here’s how the Twins have done so far:

RUN	Games	W	L	Probability	Weighted
0	1	0	1	0	0
1	1	0	1	0.037	0.037
2	2	0	2	0.25	0.5
3	3	3	0	0.394	1.182
4	1	0	1	0.456	0.456
5	2	2	0	0.611	1.222
6	1	1	0	0.735	0.735
7	3	2	1	0.821	2.463
11	1	1	0	0.972	0.972
12	1	1	0	0.972	0.972
Total	16	10	6		8.539

As you can see, the Twins have won a game and a half more than they should have, given the offense that they have. The hallmark of this team is pitching, so one would guess that to be the case, anyway. Right now, I’m just throwing the data out there. In the future, I might provide a little more analysis.

Recap of the Eight Games

The first half the eight games were played against the D:\Rays. The Twins tacked on 12 runs in one game, but otherwise had just nine runs against the worst pitching staff in the AL (6.09 ERA). The Twins went out to Seattle and fared considerably better, getting 20 runs in three games. The Twins also got seven runs in a loss in the sixteenth game of the season against the Royals (gasp).

For the eight game stretch, the Twins scored 50 runs, an average of 6.25 runs. That number was buoyed by two double digit totals.

Here are the offensive totals of the last 8 games.

NAME	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	BB	SO	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Joe Mauer	7	24	9	10	4	0	0	14	6	6	6	2	0	0.417	0.548	0.583	1.132
Jason Tyner	7	24	7	10	4	0	0	14	3	1	1	1	0	0.417	0.462	0.583	1.045
Justin Morneau	8	32	6	11	2	0	2	19	6	4	1	0	0	0.344	0.417	0.594	1.010
Torii Hunter	6	25	3	8	5	0	1	16	8	0	4	2	0	0.320	0.320	0.640	0.960
Michael Cuddyer	8	34	8	10	3	1	2	21	11	1	5	0	0	0.294	0.333	0.618	0.951
Jason Bartlett	7	24	4	9	1	0	0	10	3	3	0	1	0	0.375	0.444	0.417	0.861
Luis Castillo	6	23	4	6	1	0	0	7	0	2	1	0	0	0.261	0.320	0.304	0.624
Mike Redmond	4	17	2	4	2	0	0	6	4	0	1	0	0	0.235	0.235	0.353	0.588
Jason Kubel	6	21	2	5	2	0	0	7	2	0	5	1	0	0.238	0.227	0.333	0.561
Luis Rodriguez	5	19	2	3	0	0	1	6	2	1	1	0	0	0.158	0.200	0.316	0.516
Nick Punto	4	16	2	3	1	0	0	4	2	1	3	1	0	0.188	0.235	0.250	0.485
Alexi Casilla	5	14	1	3	0	0	0	3	0	0	4	2	0	0.214	0.214	0.214	0.429
Josh Rabe	4	12	0	2	0	0	0	2	1	0	3	0	0	0.167	0.167	0.167	0.333
Chris Heintz	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
Jeff Cirillo	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
Rondell White	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000

Once again, the big four of Mauer, Morneau, Cuddyer, and Hunter had good stretches. Bartlett and Tyner pitched in well, too. Most of the pirhanas did very little swimming this time around once again. For the eight games, the Twins hit .295/.344/.453/.797, which we will take every time.

Here’s the offensive totals through 16 games.

NAME	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	TB	RBI	BB	SO	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Joe Mauer	15	53	14	20	6	0	0	26	7	9	10	3	0	.377	.476	.491	.967
Justin Morneau	16	60	11	18	3	0	4	33	12	9	7	0	0	.300	.391	.550	.941
Michael Cuddyer	16	63	12	21	6	1	2	35	15	2	12	0	0	.333	.373	.556	.929
Torii Hunter	14	53	7	15	10	0	2	31	12	2	9	4	0	.283	.309	.585	.894
Jason Tyner	13	35	9	12	4	0	0	16	3	1	2	3	0	.343	.378	.457	.836
Jeff Cirillo	2	3	0	1	0	0	0	1	1	1	1	0	0	.333	.500	.333	.833
Luis Castillo	14	55	6	15	2	0	0	17	3	4	4	2	0	.273	.322	.309	.631
Jason Kubel	12	36	2	9	3	0	0	12	5	2	8	1	0	.250	.282	.333	.615
Luis Rodriguez	7	24	2	5	0	0	1	8	2	1	1	0	0	.208	.240	.333	.573
Jason Bartlett	14	44	4	10	1	0	0	11	4	5	5	2	0	.227	.306	.250	.556
Nick Punto	12	46	7	8	4	0	0	12	3	5	10	1	0	.174	.255	.261	.516
Mike Redmond	7	26	2	5	2	0	0	7	4	1	3	0	0	.192	.222	.269	.491
Alexi Casilla	7	17	1	4	0	0	0	4	0	0	4	2	0	.235	.235	.235	.471
Rondell White	3	9	1	1	0	0	0	1	2	2	1	0	0	.111	.273	.111	.384
Josh Rabe	5	15	0	2	0	0	0	2	1	0	4	0	0	.133	.133	.133	.267
Chris Heintz	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000	.000	.000	.000
Twins	16	539	78	146	41	1	9	216	74	44	81	18	0	.271	.330	.401	.731

Categories: Eight Pack, Minnesota Twins

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