The WGOM

Welcome, SBG fans, to the twentieth edition of 360 Degrees, a regular report on the Twins starting pitching.

Perhaps the most famous speech in the history of the country was delivered at Gettysburg, PA. I’ve stood on the spot where Lincoln delivered his famous Address. The battlefields at Gettysburg are interesting, but it’s clear that time has ravaged the sites (not to mention the visitor’s center). If you do get a chance to tour Gettysburg, buy the audio tour. It’s well worth it.

This report includes the five games ending on Wednesday, July 26, 2006. Let’s go to the numbers.

The Twins starters and a rough trip through the rotation, but most of that can be attributed to a very tough outing for Scott Baker in a 11-0 loss to the Indians. You see the innings are down, including F-Bomb, who racked up almost 100 pitches in five innings of work. The starter’s ERA was up a run over last time and the FIP was up by almost 0.50 runs. Still, the pitching as a whole was pretty good at the top of the rotation.

The defensive efficiency weren’t all that good this time around, either. Three of the last four times around the rotation, we’ve seen some poor numbers. I don’t know if it’s a symptom the problems with Silva and Baker or it’s the cause of their problems.

The worst defensive efficiency? When F-Bomb was on the mound. These are small sample sizes, but now we have 20 games where the numbers are down. Keep watching.

The Twins starters allowed a collective line of .287/.311/.548/.859 with a .277 GPA. The OBP is great, but the slugging percentage! The slugging percentage was very high. The Twins gave up a ton of extra base hits. Then again, the Twins weren’t playing Kansas City and Tampa Bay here, it was She-Cago and Cleveland. That might have something to do with it.

Let’s look at the individual numbers.

Once again, it’s the F-BOMB who wins the 360 Degree Hot Pitcher Award for the 20th trip around the rotation. This just in. He’s pretty good.

Welcome, SBG fans, to the nineteenth edition of 360 Degrees, a regular report on the Twins starting pitching.

All week long, I was thinking “Hey Nineteen” by Steely Dan. But, then I got a little Rolling Stones jones going on and the nerves got the better of me, if you know what I mean.

This report includes the five games ending on Friday, July 21, 2006. Let’s go to the numbers.

The Twins had a very nice ERA, but the underlying numbers weren’t as terrific. For one thing, the Twins allowed more hits than innings pitched. With the exact number of innings, walks were up, strikeouts were down, but home runs were down, too. The last three trips show a FIP markedly higher than the four trips before, but still the numbers aren’t terrible. When you consider how much crappiness Carlos Silva contributed, the numbers would be a lot better without him. Hmmm.

When you have someone give up 13 hits and doesn’t get out of the fifth inning, you have to believe that the defensive numbers won’t be good. And you’d be right.

The numbers weren’t good, and when Carlos Silva was on the mound, the defensive efficiency was just .440. Owie.

The Twins starters allowed a collective line of .268/.299/.425/.724 with a .241 GPA. Those are good, not great, numbers. The OBP is very nice, but the slugging percentage is about average.

Let’s look at the individual numbers.

Brad Radke won last time and he did a nice job (even though his FIP was pretty high with the 2 HRs). But, make no mistake. The F-BOMB wins the 360 Degree Hot Pitcher Award for the 19th trip around the rotation. A GPA of .070? Get serious!

Welcome, SBG fans, to the eighteenth edition of 360 Degrees, a regular report on the Twins starting pitching.

Alice Cooper sang in the song “I’m Eighteen” that he was “in the middle of life”. Well, if he meant that his life was half over, he was wrong about that. I actually heard the song “I’m Eighteen” on the radio on my eighteenth birthday. I wasn’t “in the middle of life” then, either, thankfully. Why? Because if I had been, I wouldn’t be bringing you this edition of 360 Degrees.

Last time, my friend Moss gave me a bunch of grief because I neglected to name enough songs with the number seventeen in it. So, in a pout worthy of someone who is not an adult (which, of course, is what you are when you turn 18), I won’t do anything else on the number 18, and just joylessly move on to the analysis of the pitching staff.

This report includes the five games ending on Sunday, July 16, 2006. While the totality of the results aren’t all that surprising, how we got there was. The Twins had two bad outings, one from Johan Santana and one from The Generalissimo. Let’s go to the numbers.

There are some interesting numbers here. Note that the WHIP is pretty low. Indeed, the Twins had just five walks and 26 hits in 32 innings. But, eight of those 26 hits were home runs. So, even though the Twins averaged almost a strikeout per inning and issued the low number of walks, the FIP was one of the highest of the year at 5.04 and the ERA was 4.22. Santana and Liriano gave five of those eight home runs in the first two starts of this trip (Santana allowed another in his second start). I doubt that Johan and Francisco are going to fall apart here, so it is overall quite encouraging that Silva and Radke pitched well. Oh, and Johan looked very good on Saturday night against a tough Cleveland squad.

If you look at the numbers, you should figure that the defense was a lot better this time around. And you’d be right. Let’s check it out.

After the last outing, with the ridiculously low number, we saw a very good defensive efficiency once again. And the evidence mounts that moving the Cubanistas and Stewart off the field means more outs on balls put in play. With Hunter out of the lineup, we’ll see if this number changes. If Punto keeps playing out there, it might be an adventure. Punto was badly fooled on a ball on Sunday, but he got back and made the play. I thought he showed a very strong arm on Saturday night and he’s got a lot of speed.

After giving up an absurd .344/.413/.522/.936 line last time (.317 GPA!!), the starters as a group rebounded to allow a .220/.246/.449/.695 line with a .223 GPA. And yet, the FIP was up by over a run. Defense? Luck? Lots of balls caught on the warning track? Some of that to be sure.
Let’s look at the individual numbers.

The Generalissimo got demoted. With a nice bounce back effort on the heels of his (ouch) cortisone shot, Brad Radke wins the 360 Degree Hot Pitcher Award. Congratulations, old man and nice effort.

Welcome, SBG fans, to the seventeenth edition of 360 Degrees, a regular report on the Twins starting pitching.

Seventeen is my number – I was born on the seventeenth day of the year in 1965. I share my birthday with a first cousin. In addition, another of my first cousins was born on July 17, six months away from my birthday. My half-birthday, if you will. I have 17 first cousins (on one side). My nephew and Godson was born on July 17.

In Italy, seventeen is an unlucky number. When viewed as the Roman numeral, XVII, it is then changed anagramtically to VIXI, which in the Latin language it translates to "I have lived", the perfect tense implying "My life is over." (c.f. "Vixerunt", Cicero's famous announcement of an execution.) In Italy, it is not uncommon to notice that buildings do not have 17th floor, hotels do not have a room 17. The Italian airline carrier, Alitalia, does not have a seat 17. Renault sold its "R17" model in Italy as "R177."

Seventeen is the described at MIT as 'the most random number', according to hackers' lore. This is supposedly because in a study where respondents were asked to choose a random number from 1 to 20, 17 was the most common choice.

Of course, a lot of popular songs describe girls that are seventeen, including Dancing Queen, I Saw Her Standing there, and of course, the Winger “classic”, Seventeen.

This report includes the five games ending on Saturday, July 8, 2006. Once again, the comment that I made a couple of times ago about Carlos Silva has come back to bite me in the arse. He’s been pretty bad the last two times out, and now he might be hurt (although he says his knee feels better). It was not a good trip around the rotation, the brilliance of one Generalissimo Francisco Liriano notwithstanding. Let’s go to the numbers.

We see a huge drop in the number of innings pitched by starters. Only The Generalissimo went as many as six innings. Bonser and Silva each didn’t make it to the fourth inning. The truly surprising thing was that Santana had to be pulled in the middle of the sixth inning against the Royals. Wow, was that a bad series. I’d like to pretend it didn’t happen.

This trip ended a string of four consecutive trips where the starters allowed fewer hits than innings pitched. If you look, you will see that it ended with a vengeance. Let’s check out the defensive numbers, if you can stand the bad news.

As I watched the games, I saw ball after ball finding its way through the infield or falling into the outfield. Most tellingly was a game in which a ball fell in front of Hunter and then another ball got over his head. I may be wrong and I’m trying to be objective here, but I think the Hunter of prior years gets both of those balls. Even with the bad numbers (and they are as bad as we’ve seen all year), Radke made a point of saying that Bartlett saved him from further carnage with his defense. And Bartlett appears to be getting to a lot of balls.

So, let’s compare his numbers to Castro’s. Bartlett has a Range Factor of 4.06 and a Zone Rating of .863. Castro had a Range Factor of 4.72 and a Zone Rating of .799. Range Factor is simply (PO +A) divided by innings. Zone Rating is the percentage of balls fielded by a player in his typical defensive "zone," as measured by STATS, Inc. Castro made more plays per inning, but Bartlett is making more plays in his zone. Baseball Prospectus had Castro at a Rate of 102 in 2006 for the Twins, meaning that Castro saved 2% more runs than average. Bartlett’s Rate is at 95, or 5% fewer than average. Interesting.

As a staff, the starters allowed opponents to hit an absurd .344/.413/.522/.936 with a GPA of .317. Gack!
Now the individual numbers.

This reminds me of when I was a junior in high school. I ran cross country and there was a freshman who was obviously a better runner than me. However, I wasn’t going to let him beat me and he never did. That year. The next year, he was way out beyond me and I never beat him again. Santana has held back Liriano for a long time, but now, The Generalissimo is the best pitcher on this staff. In a no-contest, he wins the 360 Degree Hot Pitcher Award again. Note how I compared myself to Johan Santana. Ha.

Welcome, SBG fans, to the sixteenth edition of 360 Degrees, a regular report on the Twins starting pitching. I could have called this edition the Frank Viola Edition, but Frankie V was one of my favorite Twins ever and I was being snarky when I named the last (Christian Guzman Memorial Edition) entry, so we'll go with the sweet sixteen reference.

Last time, I added the Wikipedia entry on the number fifteen, and I think we'll continue that tradition with sixteen:

Sixteen is a composite number, the smallest number with exactly five divisors, its proper divisors being 1, 2, 4 and 8. It is the fourth power of two. For this reason, 16 was used in weighing light objects in several cultures. The British used to have 16 ounces in one pound, the Chinese used to have 16 liangs in one jin. In old days, weighing was done with a beam balance to make equal splits. It would be easier to split a heap of grains into sixteen equal parts through successive divisions than to split into ten parts. Chinese Taoists did finger computation on the trigrams and hexagrams by counting the finger tips and joints of the fingers with the tip of the thumb. Each hand can count up to 16 in such manner. The Chinese abacus uses two upper beads to represent the 5's and 5 lower beads to represent the 1's, the 7 beads can represent from a hexadecimal digit from 0 to 15 in each column.

Sixteen is the only integer that equals mn and nm, for some unequal integral m and n (m=4, n=2, or vice versa). It has this property because 2^2=2X2. It is also equal to 2↑↑3, (using Knuth's up-arrow notation).

16 is a centered pentagonal number.

This report includes the five games ending on Sunday, July 2, 2006. Last time, I was absolutely ecstatic about this starting staff. I'm tempered a little, teeny tiny bit, but not much. Why am I tempered? Well, because I went out on a limb and said that Carlos Silva was back in form. Well, this time out, he reverted to 2005 form. The other four starts? Outrageous. Let's go to the numbers.

[Note from SBG: I have been using a different formula for FIP than what Hardball Times uses. I have corrected these numbers to correspond to the FIP number used by THT.]

Even with Silva's poor outing, the overall numbers are very good. The average start was over 6.5 innings with less than 2 runs allowed. Strikeouts were up and walks and home runs were low. In fact, this trip around the rotation, the five starts (two by Liriano) were the lowest cumulative FIP of any trip to date.

Let’s check out the defensive numbers.

Once again, the defensive efficiency is way up. The Twins are touting an improved defense since the exfoliation. And it's borne out in the numbers. The Twins now have a great defense.

As a staff, the starters allowed opponents to hit 0.216/0.247/0.326/0.573 with a GPA of .193. I'll take it every time and twice on Sunday.

Now the individual numbers.

It's been tough for Mr. Liriano. He keeps trying and trying and still can't get past the man, Johan Santana. This time, however, he got two shots at him and in the second attempt, The Generalissimo did enough (8 IP, 3 H, 0R, 1BB, 12K, -0.80 FIP) to win the 360 Degree Hot Pitcher Award.

Welcome, SBG fans, to the fifteenth edition of 360 Degrees, a regular report on the Twins starting pitching. The further we go, the harder it is to come up with a title for these things (as we can see here), but I've also found that wikipedia has an entry on numbers and we find out the following about the number fifteen:

Fifteen is a triangular number and a hexagonal number, a pentatope number, and the 4th Bell number. Fifteen is the double factorial of 5. It is a composite number; its proper divisors being 1, 3 and 5. With only two exceptions, all prime quadruplets enclose a multiple of 15, with 15 itself being enclosed by the quadruplet (11, 13, 17, 19). 15 is also the number of supersingular primes.

Now, if you know what all of those things are, congratulations! But here's something you may not have known. The word uncopyrightable is fifteen letters and one of two words that is that long without repeating a letter. This original piece of work known as 360 Degrees is most definitely not uncopyrightable, so let's get on with it, shall we?

This report includes the five games ending on Monday, June 26, 2006. Last time, I wrote that “[i]t’s clear now that the Twins pitching starting pitching staff is pitching the way we expected they would at the start of the season.” However, this trip through the rotation not only continues the fantastic resurgence it is almost unbelieveable. The sun is shining on this team in a way that few could have imagined just few short weeks ago.

Whew! I'm not ready to get going yet. Before we go on, let’s take a short break and travel back in time about 35 years.

Thanks for the idea, Banjo. Okay. I’m feeling good. Let’s go to the numbers.

First of all, the Twins rotation had a season high 37 1/3 innings pitched – the first time that the rotation averaged seven innings. Only Boof Bonser’s 6 1/3 inning effort fell short of the seven inning mark. And all five starters notched a quality start. With a season high number of innings, the Twins also had a season low five earned runs allowed. With just 28 hits and a 5:75:1 K/BB ratio and only two homeruns, well, Let the Sun Shine in.

The Twins had a wonderful 2.48 FIP and an astounding 1.21 ERA. If you have been following this report, you might have started to believe that FIP was not really related to ERA at all because the Twins’ FIP was always lower than the ERA. Now, however, we are starting to see that the Twins’ starters are having an ERA that is much lower than the FIP. Is it that the pitching staff is just so much better? Well, the pitching has been better, as you can see from the falling FIP. But also, balls are not getting through the infield and are being caught in the outfield. Mark Rosen, when talking about Nick Punto last night said that maybe the Twins should have released Tony Batista a long time ago. I vote for not signing him at all.

Let’s check out the defensive numbers.

Simply fucking amazing. The Twins cut bait on the Cubanistas and the defensive efficiency goes right through the roof, from historically bad numbers. Yep, it's sad what's happening here right now. (Couldn't help it, spycake.) Even Terry Ryan said on Sunday that the Twins are fielding more balls now than before. Friends, this is not rocket science. It's an amazing thing and I didn't think we'd see such an incredible change in the numbers. But, there it is.

As a staff, the starters allowed opponents to hit 0.212/0.235/0.273/0.508 with a GPA of .174. The Twins allowed the just the two homeruns and well, the numbers are out of sight.

Everybody is deserving of winning the (now named) 360 Degree Hot Pitcher Award. Radke had the lowest FIP. Bonser and Radke didn’t give up a run. Santana and The Generalissimo are still great. But, this time I’m going out there and giving Carlos Silva the award. Mr. Silva looked great on Monday night. He had the lowest OPS and lowest GPA. Congratulations, Mr. Silva, you have returned to form.

Welcome, SBG fans, to the fourteenth edition of 360 Degrees, a regular report on the Twins starting pitching. This report includes the five games ending on Wednesday, June 21, 2006. It’s clear now that the Twins pitching starting pitching staff is pitching the way we expected they would at the start of the season. Once again, the starters had a very good FIP and a reasonable ERA.

And, once again, the Twins got some good defense. It’s amazing how much better this team is defensively when the left side got replaced.

Let’s start by going to the numbers.

Three walks in 29 innings pitched. An 8:1 K/BB ratio. Those are very nice numbers. With three more quality starts, the starters have eleven quality starts in the last twenty. Perhaps the Twins can see their way clear to substitute Scott Baker back in for Boof Bonser.

As I said above, the defensive numbers were good. Let’s check them out.

Once again, the Twins defensive efficiency is respectable or even above average. Do you find it amazing that the Twins have had pretty much the same FIP for the last six trips around the rotation but in the last couple of trips the defensive efficiency is a lot better? I don’t think it’s amazing either. I think it’s entirely predictable.

As a staff, the starters allowed opponents to hit 0.248/0.267/0.434/0.701 with a GPA of .229. The Twins allowed the five homeruns, but with the three walks the OBP is very low.

Guess what. Johan Santana wins again. Fliriano has been fantastic, but Santana is the best pitcher right now in the American League.

Welcome, SBG fans, to the thirteenth edition of 360 Degrees, a regular report on the Twins starting pitching. This report includes the five games ending on Friday, June 15, 2006. Last time, I wrote about how the Twins pitching was pretty bad, with a 5.19 FIP. And now for something completely different. The Twins starters had their best FIP and WHIP of the season. And with an improving defense behind them (or is it improved pitching?) the starters had a sparkling 1.91 ERA.

For the second of three trips through the rotation, the defense was very good. Now with Stewart, Batista, and Castro out of the lineup, this team’s defense should be improved.

Let’s start by going to the numbers.

Seven runs allowed by the starters in 33 innings pitched. Five of those were allowed in Silva’s first outing (he had two this time). That is phenomenal. Once again, the ERA was lower than the FIP. Even so, the FIP was absurdly low. Santana had a FIP of -0.05. Liriano had a FIP of 1.77. Obviously, these guys are driving the entire rotation, even with improved outings by Radke (he still had a FIP of 5.20) and Silva the second time around.

As I said above, the defensive numbers were very good. Let’s check them out.

Once again, the Twins defensive efficiency is up. Is it improved defense? I’m not sure. We see Santana and Liriano with great numbers. Is it their great pitching? Well, Liriano has a .682 defensive efficiency, despite his string of low hit games. In other words, before that, he had a terrible defensive efficiency.
As a staff, the starters allowed opponents to hit 0.219/0.260/0.339/0.598 with a GPA of just 0.202. Fantastic! Let’s look at the performances by starter.

Only Silva’s first outing wasn’t a quality start. The brilliant start by Liriano and the nice effort tonight by Silva might have won pitcher of the rotation in previous trips. But, Johan Santana wins again. Eight innings against the Red Sox with no walks and 13Ks with only five hits and one run. Yep, Our Guy Johan Santana wins again.

Welcome, SBG fans, to the tenth edition of 360 Degrees. This is one game late and doesn’t include the Baker start on Tuesday. I suppose 360 lashes with a wet noodle are in order. For the second consecutive time, the trip includes two starts by one pitcher – this time it’s Brad Radke. Mr. Radke gave us two distinctively different starts, a 2006 version of Radke in an 11-0 drubbing and a nice start in the first game against the Angels, which was all for naught. Let’s not think about how that game turned out. Instead, let’s go to the numbers.

The starters had lower walks, strikeouts and home runs than last time. Bad idea. More balls put in play means more hits and a higher ERA. Even though the FIP was 0.38 lower than last time, the ERA was up 0.68! As you probably know, I’ve been harping on the defense for quite a while. These five games were atrociously bad, especially when the starters were in. Let’s go to the numbers.

Can you believe it? The Twins defense gave the starters a .598 defensive efficiency! That’s historically bad. I mean it was bad before, but now? And this is with Shannon Stewart on the DL. The Twins are atrocious at third and first and not very good up the middle in the infield. I’m not too keen on Cuddyer in right field. This is quite possibly the worst defensive team in most of our lifetimes.
As a staff, the starters allowed opponents to hit .337/.365/.437/.802 with a GPA of .273. The batting average is high, but the slugging percentage is about league average, which indicates that the Twins starters didn’t give up a whole lot of extra base hits. Now by starter.

Once again, Johan Santana was disappointing at least for him. Radke was Jekyl and Hyde. Bonser’s effort was not as good as last time. I think there is a feeling that Bonser has been pitching in trouble most of the time during his two starts and that his trouble would catch up with him. Yet, his FIP for his first two starts is 3.56. Not too shabby. Of course, he has a historically bad defense behind him, so look for his ERA to go up.
The best pitcher this time around is Francisco Liriano. I think that’s not the last time I’m going to say that.