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This Date in Twins History: May 29

socaltwinsfan May 29, 2009, at 2:01 am 4 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)
1987 Mark Salas had two home runs and five RBIs after entering in the seventh inning for catcher Tim Laudner to give him a rest with the Twins trailing 13-1. The Tigers won 15-7.
1991 Jack Morris pitched a four-hitter and the Twins defeated Nolan Ryan and the Rangers 9-1 despite the top three batters in the order (Chuck Knoblauch, Al Newman, and Kirby Puckett) going 0-for-14.
2003 The Twins' Lew Ford got his first major league hit, a single off the Mariners' Shigetoshi Hasegawa in the ninth inning of a 10-6 defeat.
2004 Future Twin Dennys Reyes won a pitcher's duel with Johan Santana in the Royals' 5-2 victory. Reyes went seven strong innings and the Royals waited until the seventh inning to knock out Santana, who went on to win the Cy Young Award by a unanimous vote. Reyes signed with the Twins in 2006 and became an effective LOOGY.
2008 Kevin Slowey threw a six-hitter in a 5-1 victory over the Royals, who did not score until two outs in the ninth inning. Carlos Gomez went 4-for-5 with two doubles and improved his batting average to .293 and his OPS to .756.

This Date in Twins History: May 25

socaltwinsfan May 25, 2009, at 2:05 am Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired
1961 The Twins rallied for single runs in each of the final four innings for a 7-6, 11-inning victory over the Tigers. Reno Bertoia's pinch-hit two-out RBI single tied the game at 5-5 in the ninth. Hal Naragon's pinch-hit, two-out RBI single in the 10th tied it at 6-6, and Jim Lemon's RBI single in the 11th won the game.
1965 The Twins hit five home runs and totaled 10 extra-base hits in a 17-5 victory over the Red Sox.
1969 The Twins' Dave Boswell pitched a three-hitter in a 2-1 victory over the Yankees in the first game of a doubleheader. Boswell held the Yankees to one run despite eight walks. In the second game, Dick Woodson held the Yankees scoreless through the first eight innings of a 3-2 victory.
1981 Bill Stein of the Texas Rangers hit a pinch-hit single off Doug Corbett in the ninth inning to beat the Minnesota Twins 4-3. It was the 7th consecutive pinch-hit for Stein, breaking the American League record set by Bob Johnson in 1964.

Typealyzer — what type is your blog?

brianS November 20, 2008, at 2:15 pm 11 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) ,

Inquiring minds want to know where the WGOM fits in, even though it isn't a "blog" Wink
Well, here's your answer! We are "performers."

ESFP - The Performers

[ESFP]

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The [sic] enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

I don't know about you, but I'm a state worker bee. Nary a "soft fabric," "bright color" or "sweet smell" to be found here in the bunker.

Gomez for GG??

ubelmann September 30, 2008, at 12:23 am 9 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

I'm not sure if this is a good or bad sign (about me), but I couldn't not post this comment I ran across:

Jones was only +3 runs according to Dewan's +/- system

Carlos Gomez led CFers with +33.

Above average for CF is nothing to sneeze at.

by G_ on Sep 29, 2008 11:46 AM PDT reply 0 recs

I'll leave it as a homework problem or something to find Dewan's +/- rankings to double-check that, since I'm short on time. If it's true (not really any reason to believe someone would lie about this), and it's an accurate assessment (more difficult to say), it's crazy. It would essentially make Gomez the Mark Belanger of modern-day CF.

Dewan's system is independent of The Hardball Times' RZR and OOZ metrics, and Gomez had the second-best RZR in the league and the most out-of-zone plays in the league.

When I watch Gomez play, I do not see a fantastic defender, but there are the numbers refusing to agree with me. The Twins actually finished the season with a non-abysmal defensive efficiency, and it certainly wasn't because their infield was great. The Twins have a flyball-heavy staff, but not the most extreme in the AL and in the same vicinity as some other teams, so that would only partially explain Gomez being 33 runs above average for one of the most important defensive positions on the field.

As Jeff Sullivan mentions, if this is accurate, that makes Gomez something like a 1.0 to 1.5-win above average player over the course of the season, even with the banjo hitting. For comparison, Santana (at least according to tRA and PRAA) was about 20 runs above average for a pitcher this year, making him about a 2-win above average player.

So in just considering this year, if Gomez was really that good on defense, the Twins only lost about 0.5-1.0 win by trading Santana, and they saved roughly $19M, which they used to employ various other players. Whether or not Pohlad is being a miser, the front office is strapped in to the budget he gives them, and it impresses me that they can make moves like this. (The Delmon trade, on the other hand, I'm still thinking was a bad idea.)

Also, with Gomez potentially GG-caliber in CF, I'm wondering if Span doesn't get a more permanent move to LF, just like the Jones-Hunter situation at the turn of the century.

Scott Baker Is Awesome At Baseball

ubelmann July 20, 2008, at 6:43 pm 14 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , ,

So, I didn't get to see the game today, but I did see the box score. What jumps out at me is that Scott Baker had an awesome game. 8 IP, 8 K, 1 BB, 1 HR, 1 R -- that's a great game. The HR kind of makes sense in light of all the fly ball outs he allowed--12+ fly balls is playing with HR fire when you're facing a group of good hitters--but it's still just one run in eight innings, and that's damned good.

Instead of watching the game, I was out substitute managing my softball team. (Sort of like Scott Ullger's role with the Twins except that I do have a stop sign in my base-coaching repertoire.) We were 6-0 so far this season and had the first seed in the playoffs wrapped up--so the outcome of the game was even more irrelevant than the outcome usually is.

I was out with a bruised thumb (Torii Hunter likely would have taken a swing at me), but figured I would show up and fill out the lineup anyway. Had I been managing for keeps, I probably wouldn't have had a woman leading off, but whatever, it was a good place to get her an extra at-bat. I also put a speedy guy second in the order even though he wasn't really a great hitter, because I knew he would be gone next week, so he'd probably get an extra AB (and he did have the game's last AB.) And then I proceeded to put the heavy hitters in, etc.

Anyway, the team we were playing was clearly jacked up to beat us, since they knew we were unbeaten. They even recruited a couple of guys (who played SS and LCF for them) who don't usually play for them. It was a back and forth game, and they had a good number of well-struck hits--we gave up a couple of outs in the field, but I didn't feel too bad giving up 16 runs to them. There were two things about their team that really made me shake my head:

1) They had a female player who was clearly trying to work a walk every time she came up to hit. I cannot fully describe how unsportsmanlike I find that particular strategy in slow-pitch softball. To make matters worse, the umpire (whose strike zone in a slow-pitch softball game should really never matter) had a bizarre strike zone that managed to shrink in every direction for the ladies. She "worked" a full-count walk in her first two at-bats--and one of them was fairly key in extending what turned out to be an 8-run inning--without taking a single swing. Then in her third at-bat, I was rather pissy about the whole situation, so I started counting out how many pitches she'd taken without swinging. Generally, I try to be a nice guy, but really, I can't stand that bullshit. We're there to play softball, not watch people stand around with the bat on their shoulder. She didn't swing for the first five pitches again, and finally, finally swung on the 18th pitch she saw that day--and hit a weak ground ball to the pitcher despite squaring up the meatball perfectly.

2) When we were making a bit of a surge in the 6th inning, our 6th hitter (a male) came up with two outs, runners on second and third, first base open, and two females hitting behind him. At some point midway through the at-bat, while coaching third base, I overheard someone on the opposite team talking about how they should intentially walk that hitter since first base was open.

Now, I'm not saying they should be grooving meatballs to the guy--I can understand pitching him carefully--but an intentional walk? In slow-pitch softball? I mean, if there's no bunting allowed in slow-pitch softball, there sure as hell shouldn't be any intentional walks. I should have kept my mouth shut, but I couldn't resist turning and asking them "do you really want to be that team that walks guys to get to girls?" His response was, "but we want to win, too." I smartly returned to keeping my mouth shut, because I guess he felt that there was no ethical dilemma in the matter and that anything they could do to increase their chances of winning was legitimate.

At any rate, he couldn't get his message to the pitcher soon enough (I guess the catcher wasn't looking to the dugout for pitch signals), our hitter hit a solid double to the LF, who let it get past him for a two-base error on top of that.

Despite that strategic "blunder," their team went on to win 16-14 in 6.5 innings. They were pretty happy with themselves, so good for them, I suppose. I wish I could have gotten my team the win, but I was unwilling to move our struggling LF elsewhere on the field, even when it was clear that it would cost us outs. Usually she plays catcher, and she's pretty athletic, but when she camps out under the ball, it's about 50-50 whether or not she'll catch it. I went against the percentages and got burned, but next week when she's willing to catch all game, where she'll make up for it and then some.

There were a couple other ways I could have micromanaged to keep our weaker players from being overexposed, but dammit, we were there to play, and all of my players were going to play. The other team came to win, and though we gave them a run for their money, I guess we both got what we were looking for.

Now, mainly I am venting because my roommates are out of town and I don't have anyone to make this rant to in person, but seeing the box score today, I made this connection: it's gotta be about more than just winning.

I don't expect major league managers to abandon the intentional walk--certainly some things change when the players are paid to pay than when the players are paying to play--or anything like that. The most important thing in professional sports is that both teams are out there trying to win. That's why gambling nearly brought down baseball in the early 20th century, and that's why tanking for playoff position at the end of the NBA season is an absolute abomination. Teams should want to win, and they should play hard.

And they will succeed. Sometimes. On some days. But 29 of 30 teams every season are going to fail to win the World Series. If it's not about something more than winning, then you might as well sit down and bleed money into a slot machine--while the odds are still against you, you'll probably hit the jackpot more often.

So for me, today was about Scott Baker and Scott Baker's awesomeness. It's easy to get wrapped up in the disappointing outcome, just as it was easy to get wrapped up in the favorable outcome for Glen Perkins and Livan Hernandez the last two days, but there's more here than the outcome. Baker's in a completely different class from those two guys, and hell, the offense had a bad day, but I don't want to sit around laying blame at the feet of the offense anyway.

Right now, Baker's an excellent pitcher. If the rest of the league doesn't respect that--and even if they do--the wins will come eventually.

Is Eric Wedge Stupid?

ubelmann July 7, 2008, at 4:13 am 13 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , ,

So, I just started on a rather ill-advised internet journey, and even though I should go to bed, I feel strangely compelled to complete that journey.

My first mistake was to check LEN3's game report to see what everyone had to say about Carlos Bunty McBunterson vs. Cliff Can't Be Bothered To Field His Position Lee.

"I was just trying to do my job and he ... jumped on me,'' Gomez said after the Twins won 4-3. "He say, 'Stop bunting.' But not like that. With bad language.

"And I say, 'You do your job and I do my job.' My coaches tell me what we have to do."

Gomez said bunting is a big part of his game and he's not going to stop doing it.

"I know he won't be mad when he throws me four sliders in a row,'' Gomez said. "It's your job to do whatever, throw me 10 sliders in a row. If I strike out, OK. I get you next time. But don't be mad when I bunt.''

And I absolutely love that response from Gomez. Of course, Cliff Lee, who had to be a big pansy to complain about bunting in the first place, was a big pansy about the issue afterward:

When Lee was asked about his conversations with Gomez, he replied, "It was nothing.''

Sure, Cliff, it was nothing. You yell at all the hitters you face, that's just how the game is played these days, right?

So I wanted to see if he expounded elsewhere, or if Eric Wedge had anything to say about it. (Honestly, I think that any manager worth his paycheck should chew out a pitcher for getting so bent out of shape about that. Do your PFP, get your booty off the mound, and get the outs. I don't recall Johan Santana ever complaining about fielding bunts while he was pouncing on them, and Cliff Lee is no Johan Santana.) I made the mistake of going over to the Indians' SBN blog Let's Go Tribe. (Long story short--they are no Sox Machine or Detroit Tigers Weblog.) I didn't see anything obviously related to a game recap, since there was all kinds of talk about the Cheeseburger trade, which I kind of wanted to avoid since I'm not that familiar with the prospects in the trade and didn't want to spend a ton of time right now looking through all of their statistics. (Though if anyone is curious, my understanding is that LaPorta is the centerpiece, and I'm not a big fan of trading up-the-middle players for corner players, but LaPorta plus prospects is probably better than the two compensation picks that Cleveland would have gotten by finishing their Captain Cheeseburger Happy Meal this year.)

Then I went to their game thread, which was another mistake. Although I could empathize with the guy complaining about Bremer's ineptitude, he was really missing the point about Hafner's old production missing from the lineup and then I had to grit my teeth through some "Mauer is overrated" posts, some suggesting that Victor Martinez is obviously better, I guess because he plays 20% of his games at first base these days. I don't know. Finally, they completely ignored the inning where the Twins took the lead, and basically ignored Lee's whining and moaning, so I didn't really get any satisfaction on that front.

At that point, I got distracted by a link to Joe Posnanski about whether or not Grady Sizemore should be hitting leadoff. Socaltwinsfan mentioned this at the beginning of the Cleveland series, but as with most lineup construction issues these days, I simply dismissed it with a "lineup effects just aren't that important" mental thought. (I mean, the Twins have had some recent games with Mauer-Morneau-Kubel hitting back-to-back-to-back, which is like crashing a biplane through the Dome's teflon roof with a sign that says "PLEASE INSERT YOUR LOOGY HERE", yet the Twins are scoring more runs than their peripherals would suggest.) But I'll take any excuse I can get to read Posnanski's blog.

Anyway, The Pos wanted Sizemore hitting third, and I wasn't particularly compelled by his argument. As one of the commenters noted, you're trading opportunities for him to drive in runs for opportunities for him to score runs. He's had five leadoff HR so far this year, and while there are some lost RBI there, he's got the best OBP on the team, and getting him more PA helps extend the game (plus more opportunities for him to hit a HR.) But that argument's not really any better than Posnanski's argument.

So I went and found Cleveland's most common lineup this year (Sizemore-Carroll-Francisco-Peralta-Choo-Blake-Dellucci-Garko-Shoppach), their PECOTA projections, and plugged them into the Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis tool.

I got these results. Basically, Wedge's lineup is at 4.72 R/G, the "best" lineup is at 4.89 R/G, and the "worst" lineup is at 4.61 R/G. Notably, in all of the "best" lineups, Sizemore is hitting first or second, and there's really no significant difference between the production of the lineups with him hitting first compared to those with him hitting second.

Some might object that the first half performance is how Wedge should be filling out the lineup (optimally, I would like to re-run PECOTA with the first-half stats included, but that's not an option.) Doing that, I get these results. This indeed changes the situation. Wedge's lineup is at 4.86 R/G, the "best" lineup is at 5.06 R/G, and the "worst" lineup is at 4.60 R/G. The important thing, though, is that in all of the "best" lineups, Sizemore is not hitting leadoff. He's mainly listed at 2nd and 4th, though there are three with him hitting 5th. (Of course, he is also not listed hitting 3rd, which is where Posnanski thinks he fits best.)

Now, as a manager, you don't really want to make it a habit of giving up 0.2 R/G. Over the course of a full season, that's about 30 runs, or roughly 3 wins. But which set of inputs should we believe more--the PECOTA forecasts or the first-half stats? I would personally lean towards the PECOTA forecasts. The first-half stats represent a particular set of performance outcomes for a player, but the PECOTA forecasts are based on multiple seasons and regressed to the mean. Shin-Soo Choo (listed leadoff in many of the "best" lineups with the first-half stats) may have a .367 OBP, but is it really a good idea to fill out your lineup on the assumption that he will continue to hit that way? There have been a lot of studies about how there's not really a "hot hand" effect in baseball, so I don't think that would be a particularly wise idea.

Also, this lineup tool doesn't consider stolen bases, which is a weapon that Sizemore has in his toolbox, and would probably be a point in favor of hitting him first as opposed to third.

Looking at everything, I would guess that Wedge is probably leaving some runs on the table by hitting Sizemore leadoff. The extra RBI he would get by hitting HR in, say, the 2nd spot would probably outweigh the 16-20 PA over the course of the season that he would lose by hitting one spot lower in the order. I don't think that "some runs" is 30 runs, but I could believe something like 5-10 runs.

At the same time, I think there are a lot of managers who would look at that group of players and just keep Sizemore where he's at because there isn't someone who would obviously be a great leadoff hitter. So when judging Wedge against his peers, I don't think this is a huge strike against him, if it's even a strike at all. That is, I'm basically sticking with my "lineup effects just aren't that important" thought.

Team Handedness

ubelmann July 7, 2008, at 2:31 am One LTE - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , ,

Some facts:

.284/.344/.419 -- MN vs. RHP, 10th best OPS in baseball
.266/.332/.413 -- AL vs. RHP

.262/.334/.404 -- AL vs. LHP
.261/.309/.375 -- MN vs. LHP, 28th best OPS in baseball

This might lead one to believe that the Twins have a ton of left-handed hitters on the team, making them especially susceptible to left-handed pitching, but that's not the case:

1731 PA as RHB (through 87 games)
1603 PA as LHB (through 87 games)

Though Mauer has been (unsustainably) good against LHP so far (.366/.413/.524 -- having already faced a left-handed pitcher in 45 games), Morneau has been nothing to write home about (.274/.305/.425), and Kubel has probably been about as unlucky vs. LHP as Mauer has been lucky (hitting just .157/.254/.235).

Many have pointed to Craig Monroe's numbers vs. LHP so far this season (which have improved of late and will likely continue to improve), but the team's right-handed hitters in general have been pretty poor against left-handed pitching. As one can see above, the average OPS against left-handed pitchers in the AL is .738. Only two regulars have an OPS better than .738 against left-handed pitchers--Joe Mauer (.937) and Carlos Gomez (.739). Morneau and Casilla have been just barely below average (.736 and .730, respectively), but Redmond, Young, Cuddyer, Monroe, and Harris have all struggled against LHP. (Harris even has a lower OPS vs. LHP than Monroe does at this point.)

It could be a sample size thing where the Twins have, as a whole, faced better than average left-handed pitching, or it could just be something of a fluke, but given their handedness (and the lack of a history of freak platoon splits), I would expect the Twins' performance against LHP to improve relative to their performance against RHP as the season wears on.

Sustainability Report: Alexi Casilla

ubelmann July 6, 2008, at 5:17 pm 5 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , ,

Alexi Casilla has been great so far this year for the Twins, but can he keep it up?

First, let's look at what he's done in the minors:

.270/.346/.348 -- age 19, Rk/A
.311/.378/.383 -- age 20, A/AA/AAA
.318/.385/.398 -- age 21, A+/AA
.269/.345/.344 -- age 22, AAA
.219/.350/.250 -- age 23, AAA (2008)

.293/.367/.366 -- overall

Since Casilla came up and got a cup of coffee two years ago, I think it tends to get lost in the mix, but Alexi Casilla is really young. Delmon and Gomez are younger, but not in a meaningful way.

Casilla has also been asked to play for a lot of different teams in a lot of different places in his rather brief career. That certainly happened a bit more with the Angels than it did with the Twins (one side effect of their patience with prospects is that you basically never look back and say that they jerked a player around between levels in the minors), but it still happened.

Last year seemed to be something of a step back for Casilla, but it wasn't really that bad of a year when you adjust for factors like: age, position, and sample size. Yes, overall it was about 550 PA (and about the worst 200 PA of his career when he was with the Twins), but in the scope of a career, 550 PA is not that much (and 200 PA is especially miniscule within that scope.) The list of players who have struggled to hit in the majors when they are 22 years of age is a long one, filled with both distinguished and undistinguished players, so I don't know that that really helps us to judge him any more than his ~200 PA this year helps us to judge him.

Getting back to his minor league performance--through all of the level switches, when you look at the aggregate numbers, he's been able to hit for average. A .293 average for that age at those levels is nothing to sneeze at, and with just 178 strikeouts against 158 walks in 1686 plate appearances, mixed in with some speed, hittng for average looks like a sustainable skill for Casilla.

Casilla's walk rate has also been above average, though not completely stellar. As long as he can hit for a high average, though, pitchers will be careful enough with him that he should be able to keep up a reasonable walk rate.

Alexi hasn't had much power. That's a negative, and with the low strikeout rate, it seems unlikely that he'll develop anything more than gap power. On the other hand, I've seen Billy Beane quoted as saying, essentially, that good hitters can become power hitters but power hitters don't become good hitters. The idea is that power tends to be one of the last tools to develop and if you hit for a high average, you're probably good at making contact, and those hits might eventually go for more bases, but if you're not good at making contact, you can't usually develop that skill. So there's a chance that Casilla could hit for a ~.150 ISO in a couple of his peak seasons. That's not Ruthian, but it would be Alomarian. Either way, power or no power, he's a middle infielder so it's not a huge concern if he can continue to get on base.

From a fielding standpoint, I just don't know what to make of Casilla at this point. It's tempting to think that his speed should give him good range, but he also doesn't seem (to me) to have great hands and in the past he's been prone to making silly mistakes. I'm essentially pleading not enough information here, but in the absence of more information, I'd say that he'll probably wind up being closer to average than he'll be to great or terrible.

Overall, I look at Alexi, and I see a guy with a better track record than Luis Rivas. I know that doesn't carry a lot of weight with Twins fans, but Rivas wasn't as bad as he was made out to be. He was a replacement level player who got essentially replacement level dollars. Rivas never really helped the team win, but he wasn't actively hurting them either. (And the Twins did manage to win a lot of games with Rivas around.)

So it seems completely plausible to me that Alexi can be an above replacement level player on a yearly basis. Just how far above replacement level is tricky to say. The tools are there for him to be a borderline All-Star (or even a full-fledged All-Star) every now and then--in the same way that Luis Castillo was a borderline All-Star some years and managed to actually make the team 3 times--but there are enough question marks that you wouldn't want to count on it.

I don't expect Alexi to hit .321/.366/.455 for the rest of the season, but .290/.350/.375 seems like a reasonable expectation to me. Going back to Luis Castillo, he hit .323/.383/.395 in the second half of 2006. The gap between that performance and my expectation for Casilla is not that big.

Game 87: Tribe vs. Twins

ubelmann July 5, 2008, at 5:10 pm 156 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) ,

Laffey v. Slowey

I didn't get to watch the game yesterday, but looking at the box score, it was good to see that the Twins put a bunch of runs on the board. Delmon's been pretty hot lately, which I am really glad to see. Having him hit well over the second half of the season would be tremendous.

Selectively choosing endpoints:

.390/.429/.576 -- Delmon Young, last 15 games

So essentially, over the last two weeks, Delmon's been as effective as Manny Ramirez (career OBP of .408 and career SLG of .589.) I suspect that if Delmon continues to add power (or even just continues hitting with about a .200 ISO) his walk rate will improve somewhat so that he won't have to hit .330 to have a decent OBP (though hitting .330 never hurts if you can do it.) Realistically, he's not going to sustain that kind of OBP through the rest of this season, but sustaining the power isn't out of the question. Go Delmon, go. Go Twins, go.

On The Road

ubelmann June 23, 2008, at 1:55 pm 31 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , ,

First off, I'd like to mention that I had a great time at the Convention on Saturday and I really wish I could have spent more time there, as I would have liked to chat with everyone more than I did. Special thanks to SBG for arranging the whole thing and to Banjo for grilling (and for the bag.)

Mauer now has a tenuous lead in the All-Star voting. I'd like to see that gap increase, if possible. With any luck, Yankees fans will stop voting for Posada, since he's basically out of the race now, and vote for Mauer to keep Varitek out of the starting spot.

Now it's time to get serious: The Twins are the worst team in the AL Central. Well, at least according to Baseball Prospectus' Current Adjusted Standings. In the Adjusted Standings, teams are ranked by their "third-order" wins and losses, which are themselves calculated by adjusting their equivalent runs scored and allowed for quality of opponent. (And of course, equivalent runs scored and allowed are adjusted for park factor, and don't give a team any credit for being "clutch.") Let's take a little bit of a look into how the Twins manage to be last in the Adjusted Standings despite being second in the actual standings.

First we'll start with the actual standings:

Team W L RS RA
White_Sox 41 34 367 296
Twins 40 36 365 367
Tigers 36 39 360 362
Indians 35 41 343 328
Royals 33 43 302 357

The Twins are in second, right behind the White Sox, but the Tigers are definitely within striking distance. Now for the first-order wins and losses, which is essentially a more sophisticated pythagorean record:

Team W1 L1 RS RA
White_Sox 44.9 30.1 367 296
Indians 39.6 36.4 343 328
Twins 37.8 38.2 365 367
Tigers 37.3 37.7 360 362
Royals 32.2 43.8 302 357

Here we see the Indians pass the Twins and the Tigers pull nearly dead-even with the Twins. This is not terribly surprising considering that the the Indians have outscored their opponents while the Twins and Tigers have been outscored by two runs each.

Another thing I notice here is that the Twins, Tigers, and White Sox are essentially in a three-way tie to lead the division in runs scored. However, the Twins, Tigers, and Royals are essentially in a three-way tie for last in the division in runs allowed. These are Bill Smith's Bizarro Twins, having invested heavily in corner players, traded away a star pitcher, and taken on some defensive liabilities.

Now on to the second order wins and losses, adjusting for "luck" to some degree-where runs scored and allowed are figured based on singles, doubles, walks, strikeouts, home runs, etc., etc., etc.

Team W2 L2 EQR EQRA
White_Sox 43.8 31.2 367 306
Tigers 37.9 37.1 350 346
Indians 35.3 40.7 319 345
Royals 34 42 302 339
Twins 32.5 43.5 325 380

...and that takes us to last place. What happened? Well, the Twins have 40 fewer equivalent runs than they have actual runs, and they have 13 more equivalent runs allowed than they have actual runs allowed. So either they have a run scoring unit and a run prevention unit that is poorly modeled by EQR and EQRA or they have been quite fortunate to be where they are at now. I haven't seen anyone show that there are certain types of offenses that are poorly modeled by Baseball Prospectus' system, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Now, we adjust for opponent and get third order wins and losses:

Team W3 L3 AEQR AEQRA
White_Sox 42.9 32.1 365 313
Tigers 38.2 36.8 363 356
Indians 35.7 40.3 332 354
Royals 34.5 41.5 308 341
Twins 33.5 42.5 344 390

The Twins are still in last year, but look somewhat less bad. Actually, it appears as though, by BP's calculations, we've faced above average pitching, but below-average hitting.

What does this all mean? Perhaps we should think back for a second on why Bill James ever bothered with the pythagorean record in the first place. In a nutshell, he thought that records at the beginning of the season were misleading and noted that their runs scored and allowed more accurately predicted their future performance at the beginning of the season. Actual record eventually does better, but it takes until about 140 games into the season for that to happen.

Now, predicting future performance better than actual record is a pretty standard to achieve. Teams change as the season goes on, and there is naturally some variance in team performance over the course of the season. Pythagorean records of any flavor are far from perfect predictors, but they are the best guidelines that I know of.

Now, regardless of how the Twins have gotten here, they are within striking distance of the lead. If the Twins are to go by the adage of "two months to figure out what you've got, two months to fix it, and two months to compete," then we've already spent more than enough time figuring out what we have on hand.

I like that they have Mike Lamb in an extremely limited role right now, and I like that they have Casilla at second base. However, I think that if the Twins really want to take advantage of their position in the standings, they are going to have to make some changes. Amongst Delmon, Cuddyer, and Monroe, I expect that we are going to get pretty poor production from the corners as the season wears on. Delmon could improve eventually, but so far, he's hitting like Jason Tyner, and I don't see that changing anytime this year. Cuddyer seems hampered by injury, and I don't see that changing unless he takes a good long break to heal. Monroe wasn't all that good in the first place and hasn't been all that good so far, so I don't see any reason to expect that to change. If Mauer or Morneau get injured for a significant period of time, the offense would suffer tremendously.

And there I go trying to fix the offense when the run prevention has been a bigger problem. Having Baker and Slowey healthy could help, but I don't expect miracles there. Going forward, I don't see Perkins as a huge upgrade over what the Bonser/Perkins spot in the rotation has given us. Livan may eventually wind up being replaced with Boof, but I figure he'll probably manage to pitch just well enough here and there that his 5+ ERA will stick around. Getting rid of Rincon helps the bullpen, but Joe Nathan is still the only bullpen guy who is significantly above average. Liriano isn't going to save us--at least not the way that he did in 2006.

The Twins could probably use a pitcher or two, and an upgrade at LF, SS, and/or 3B (yes, even over Buscher.) Delmon's entrenched as a long-term guy in LF, so I probably wouldn't want to mess with that to take a shot at the division title. SS and 3B aren't all that easy to come by. Additionally, the Twins don't have a whole lot of expendable talent in AA and AAA, so I don't think that Bill Smith really has much to trade even if he identified someone who would help us and was available.

So right now, I'm going to hold onto my hat and hope the Twins are the exception to the rule. I don't see any obvious ways for them to make significant improvements, so I won't especially blame them for standing pat. It will help if they can stay healthy and if some of the younger players can improve ahead of schedule. In the meantime, it is fun to have them in the thick of things, even if it ultimately turns out to be an illusion.

Twins Offense as Measured by EQA

ubelmann June 20, 2008, at 11:12 am 13 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , ,

Definition of EQA

Players with 100+ PA:
.311 -- Joe Mauer
.303 -- Justin Morneau
.287 -- Alexi Casilla
.264 -- Jason Kubel
.260 -- League Average
.251 -- Delmon Young
.249 -- Carlos Gomez
.243 -- Michael Cuddyer
.226 -- Craig Monroe
.222 -- Brendan Harris*
.203 -- Mike Lamb

*Adam Everett, career EQA -- .230 (I figured it was worth mentioning that our no-glove SS has so far hit worse than someone deemed Adam "Neverhit" has hit in his career.)

Those players as ranked by their pre-season PECOTA-projected EQA*:

.274 -- Joe Mauer
.271 -- Justin Morneau
.269 -- Jason Kubel
.265 -- Michael Cuddyer
.262 -- Delmon Young
.250 -- Mike Lamb
.245 -- Brendan Harris
.243 -- Craig Monroe
.235 -- Carlos Gomez
.235 -- Alexi Casilla

*These are not the EQAs that you will see listed on their PECOTA cards, because those are adjusted to the historical scale, not the 2008 season scale. I have adjusted them downward based on the difference between each player's 2008 EQA adjusted for season and his 2008 EQA adjusted for all-time.

With this, we can take a look at overachievers and underachievers. Nate Silver's PECOTA forecasts have percentages listed for Breakout Rate and Collapse Rate. I may look into the breakout and collapse rates more later, but for now I will just list them.

Overachievers (breakout%):
+.052 -- Alexi Casilla (35%)
+.037 -- Joe Mauer (10%)
+.033 -- Justin Morneau (7%)
+.014 -- Carlos Gomez (40%)

(With Casilla and Gomez, this could partially be the dreaded Ugueto Efect.)

Underachievers (collapse%):
-.047 -- Mike Lamb (39%)
-.023 -- Brendan Harris (30%)
-.022 -- Michael Cuddyer (22%)
-.017 -- Craig Monroe (31%)
-.011 -- Delmon Young (18%)

Essentially Neutral (breakout%/collapse%):*
-.005 -- Jason Kubel (33%/17%)

*I was going to make the neutral category be +/-0.010 EQA, but it turned out that only one hitter fits in there right now. Go figure.

So I look at this and think to myself that it should not be that much of a surprise that Lamb, Harris, and Monroe have all failed to live up to expectations. (And it might not be especially realistic to expect them to improve much upon what they've done so far.) Cuddyer has been injured, which partially accounts for his disappointment, but he does seem to get injured a lot.

Casilla and Gomez both had very low expectations, so beating low expectations is not all that much of a surprise. (And Casilla has the fewest AB of the 10 players in the discussion here.) Since Mauer and Morneau have been very good over the last three years, it is not surprising that their breakout rates are so low (since breaking out for them would be something like going from star to superstar or HOF'er) though I admit that their projections seem pretty low after you make the adjustment from all-time EQA to season EQA.

Kubel and even Young have really not been that much different from what we should have expected. A little on the disappointing side, but not all that far below, it turns out.

Riding High in April, Shot Down in May (and Vice Versa)

ubelmann May 31, 2008, at 11:48 pm 27 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

- I'm feeling a bit for Boof right now. He works his ass off in the offseason to lose weight, because he's essentially been promised that losing weight will help him pitch better (even though there's not really a whole lot of evidence that that would be the case), then he winds up pitching about as well as he has in the past, with the results probably looking worse than they should have (at least if you're judging by ERA.)

I suppose that it was appropriate that Jesse Crain came into the sixth inning and allowed both runners on base to score. Last year, situations with runners on first and second base with no outs led to 1.5 runs on average, and Crain allowed 3 runs to cross, including Boof's two. Adding that into the rest of the season, the bullpen has allowed about 1.7 additional runs in Boof's ERA than an average bullpen would, which is nearly the worst bullpen support any of our starters have had (Blackburn is at about 1.9 additional runs.) This comes after the bullpen gave Boof the least support of all our starters last year, too.

I also suppose we'll hear about how Boof allowed 117 earned runs over his last 177 innings (for a 5.95 ERA) and that's just not "getting the job done." It's probably some combination of bad pitching, poor bullpen support, a non-stellar defense, and bad luck, but it was about 26 runs worse than league average and that's what people are going to look at, I guess. Tradition dies hard, and giving pitchers too much credit for run prevention is an age-old baseball tradition.

That's life, I guess. You work your ass off, things don't go your way for a while, and people naturally jump off the bandwagon. The good news is that, for one, there are a number of non-baseball reasons to lose weight. And additionally, if Boof keeps working hard, his results will turn around eventually, and when some other mediocre starter runs into a rough patch, or someone less durable than Boof gets injured, he'll get his shot at a rotation spot again, whether it's with the Twins or some other team.

- It seemed like Kubel was totally overmatched by Wang, and it got me to wondering if Kubel has trouble with pitches at the bottom of the zone, so that it's tough for him to hit a good sinker. Well, I checked his career splits, and so far in his career, he's hit:

.266/.338/.447 -- Kubel vs. Fly ball pitchers
.265/.311/.444 -- Kubel vs. Avg G/F pitchers
.254/.302/.369 -- Kubel vs. Ground ball pitchers

His strikeout rate is actually better against GB pitchers than it is against FB pitchers, but certainly the power totally evaporates against GB pitchers.

Anyway, it's always tough to tell if patterns like this will keep up, but it's something to keep in mind. Coming into last night's game, Kubel was .269/.333/.433 in May. Certainly nothing spectacular, but closer to what many were expecting out of him than his rather forgettable .237/.257/.381 line from April.

Bullpen Shenanigans

ubelmann May 29, 2008, at 5:00 pm 3 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

As SBG notes on the sidebar, the Twins have picked up Craig Breslow. According to Joe Christensen, the Twins are planning on adding him to the bullpen to bolster their left-handed relief. Reyes has actually been doing a pretty decent job so far, and I think the problem with the rest of the 'pen has a lot more to do with talent than it has to do with handedness.

Of course, if this opens Reyes up to more full-inning duty, that might not be a bad thing, either. His 3.01 FIP isn't the greatest in the world, but it's the second-best in the Twins' bullpen. At any rate, right now I trust him more than Jesse "Damaged Goods" Crain and Juan "Mysteriously Worse And Worse Every Year Since Testing Positive" Rincon. Guerrier's been sort of okay, with a 4ish FIP, but past that the bullpen has been nothing to write home about.

To fit Breslow on the 40-man roster, the Twins have put Neshek on the 60-day DL, but fitting him on the 25-man roster should prove to be more interesting. Christensen says that the Twins are probably looking to send someone back to Rochester, which sounds like either Korecky or Bass. Bass would probably have to pass through waivers and would likely get picked up by another team. I don't think the Twins really want to let Bass go, despite recent struggles and a ballooning ERA, but I could be wrong. Korecky's actually been about as good as Guerrier so far, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him regress a bit anyway.

Meanwhile, I've been avoiding the topic of whether or not Breslow is worth anything. ZiPS sees Breslow as about a 4.40-4.50 ERA pitcher, which isn't really worth much out of the bullpen. He hasn't been especially good at getting ground balls, or at missing bats, or at limiting walks. In the minors, he had a fair amount of control problems, too. My guess is that the Twins see something in him that they think they can iron out to get him to consistently throw strikes. This is essentially the same gamble they took on Reyes, though Reyes was way more of a ground ball machine and every now and then in his past, Reyes has missed a lot of bats with that slider of his.

According to fangraphs, Breslow throws fastball/change with the occasional slider. He certainly isn't a hard thrower, though, with his fastball clocked at 87.5 mph, his change around 75.3 mph, and his slider around 81.7 mph.

Over his relatively short major league career, he's allowed:

.263/.372/.333 vs. RHB
.244/.346/.400 vs. LHB

At a glance, one might say that he shouldn't be used as a LOOGY (the OPS against RHB is better), but the additional power that lefties have had against him is probably a small sample size fluke, and I don't see enough evidence to suggest that he would have irregular platoon splits. He'll probably get better results if we use him mostly against lefties, but I wouldn't expect extreme splits, either.

Breslow probably won't be a disaster, but he looks more like a replacement level reliever than anything else.

Going back to the bullpen situation at large, by lining up Boof's starts with Baker's, the Twins have sent a pretty strong signal that they plan on moving Boof to the bullpen. So I would say that when that happens:

1) Korecky will be in Rochester whether he gets sent down now or when Baker comes up
2) Either Bass is exposed to waivers or the Twins cut bait on Juan Rincon

Rincon's velocity is way down from where it was in 2005, his strikeout rate has declined for the fourth consecutive season, and his walk rate has increased to more than a walk every other inning. Rincon used to get a lot of ground balls, but his GB% is all the way down to 34% this year, which is probably a sign that the movement on his slider is mostly gone. Rincon's 29, but he looks pretty much done and he's been headed this way for a while.

If the Twins designate Rincon for assignment, they might get someone else to pick up his salary, and if no one else wants to pick up his salary, they might even sneak him though to Rochester.

Joe Posnanski Rocks/Some Thoughts On Managers

ubelmann May 29, 2008, at 2:30 am 27 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

First off, Joe Posnanski's blog about last night's game totally blows whatever I could possibly write out of the water. So do yourself a favor and go read it. I especially like the detail about how David DeJesus had to leave the game due to hives--and those hives could very well have cost the Royals the game. Crazy.

Secondly, Joe Posnanski's last two blog entries have made some question his sanity, given the high levels of GardenhireLove he is professing these days. I have a couple of thoughts on this:

1) Twins fans could very well be overestimating the quality of an average major league manager.

2) Managers don't matter that much

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Stories, Characters, and Storytellers

ubelmann May 28, 2008, at 11:30 pm 9 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

My reaction to statements like this one:

Next, we needed Delmon Young’s thoughts, and some interviews with him can be like pulling teeth.

Is usually just a headshake and a sigh. I can't really blame the media for wanting to interview players who give them nice articulate quotes, but at some point I think they have to just accept the reality that these guys have been selected for their ability to play baseball, not for their ability to give a good interview.

In my line of work, I will admittedly complain sometimes when it seems that students just don't care about, say, their introductory physics lab, but at the same time I realize that a lot of them are there just because it's required and not because they actually care about physics. Still, I grade their work just the same as I would grade anyone else's work (and really, some of my best students are totally disinterested but have enough talent that they can breeze through an introductory class with flying colors.)

In the same way, I expect the media to tell the same story about a star player (or a bad player) who gives good interviews as they would a player who doesn't volunteer long, interesting responses all the time. The story is what matters to the audience, and how well players give interviews should have as little influence as possible on that story.

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