The WGOM

Torii's been having a great year so far, but I was thinking, how does his plate production compare to other elite players this year?

To begin with, Torii's got the highest VORP on the Twins, and he has the 20th highest in all of baseball. On average, then, most teams have an offensive player having a better season than Hunter, position adjusted. Is is of course, not true, that most teams have a better player than Torii this year -- the Yankees have three players (A-Rod, Posada, and Jeter) in the top ten.

But then I wondered, how's he look compared to other center fielders?

Click here to continue reading Hunter as Compared to Other CFs...

Hey, I haven't provided you a VORP report lately, so I thought I'd take some time to go through things.

• Remember when Lew Ford looked like a major league ball player? Me neither. It was sure nice to see him get an at bat last night late in a tie game. Of course, ScruFi's hands were tied. He coudn't have pinch hit PHIL BERTIN' NEVIN there at all. No siree.
• Jason Kubel had a nice stretch, but overall it’s not been a season to remember. Hopefully, 2007 will bring a healthy Kubel. The guy can hit, but he’s just not healthy. The fact that he’s just plain injured makes his surprise start last week all the more galling, especially when PHIL BERTIN' NEVIN is available. In case you haven't noticed, PHIL BERTIN' NEVIN is my new Michael Cuddyer.
• Joe Mauer, even with his recent struggles has the best VORP among catchers in the American league by a wide margin, a full 21.6 higher than Victor Martinez. Joe might be a little better behind the plate, too as was evidenced in Friday night’s game in Cleveland. Joe made a fantastic block of the plate and had I been playing, I may have run on Martinez, and I haven’t stolen a base at any level in 23 years.
• Justin “Li’l Harmon” Morneau leads all AL first basemen in VORP, with a 7.5 lead over some guy named Paul Konerko. Never heard of him.
• Luis Castillo is seventh among AL 2Bers, despite having more plate appearances than everybody ahead of him. There were some rumors in the off-season of a Hunter-for-Cano swap. Cano leads the league in VORP at 2B with 38.3. For the season, Castillo is a slightly below average 2Ber offensively. He has turned in a couple excellent plays over the last couple of games defensively.
• Jason Bartlett is seventh in the AL at SS and fourth in his VORPr. Earlier this week when Terry Ryan was talking about Bartlett’s improved “urgency” and in the next breath apologizing for not bringing up Pat Neshek sooner, I was mentally taking back every positive thought I had about him for the 2006 season. Not that Neshek hasn’t been effective, but come on, give up the urgency bullshit already and just admit you were totally wrong!
• Nick Punto is sixth in the AL at 3B in VORP and is about a league average 3Ber in terms of offense. Stunning. Stunning. Stunning. I like Nick Punto in the lineup every day. He brings tremendous defense and has a serviceable bat. However, I would not expect that he’ll be a league average 3Ber in 2007. I’d live with that if he continues to play 3B like he has. Actually, he’d be a great 2Ber, but we don’t have any other solution at 3B. The Twins were fools to move Mike Cuddyer off of 3B. Unlike me, they absolutely couldn’t see that Cuddy was an everyday player. Anyway, back to Punto. My biggest beef with Punto (and really the only one, he’s been much better than I could have possibly imagined) is that he still slides into first base. Damnit, Nick! You can’t afford to risk injury on that play!
• Jason Tyner, at 1.0 VORP, is the best left fielder we have, VORPwise. Actually, Rondell White has been much, much, much better lately.
• Torii Hunter is having his second best season ever in terms of VORP. Hmmm. I wonder if he was up for a contract the last time he had this good of a season. What do you know. He was. I’ll be goddamned. At 24.8 VORP, he’s sixth in the AL and he’s no Grady Sizemore (64.5). And in the field, he’s a helluva lot closer to Willie Mays, 1973 than Willie Mays, 1954.

I have come to believe that Torii isn’t very smart. I mean, he says all kinds of dumb things and he’s never harnessed his talent at the plate. Defensively, he’s just been phenomenal for years, but it’s my opinion watching him play with diminished range this year that he was relying on his skill and athleticism alone. Now we see Hunter taking ridiculous lines on balls that he can’t possibly get to, apparently thinking that he is who he once was. I mean Kirby was hacktastic at the plate, but as he declined defensively, he never got burned like Hunter is on a regular basis, at least I don’t recall it.

I look at a guy like Bonds and I see a brilliant ball player. Not just supremely talented, but brilliant. The mental approach is beyond belief. He has excellent command of the strike zone and knows what the pitcher is going to do. In Hunter, I see a lot of talent, but not the brains. I don’t think that he’s smart enough to be an elite player. And, I’m not even sure about that. Maybe it’s that he’s not focused or he’s not adaptable. But, something is missing. And, as much as I beat down on Hunter, I do think he’s a supremely talented individual. He just never developed the way that I thought he would. On the other hand, he never had a season like either Morneau or Mauer have had this year, so maybe the problem is that I’ve simply overestimated his talent.
• The biggest news in right field is that Michael Cuddyer is in the top six in the AL in plate appearances for right fielders. Back in April, ScruFi said that Mike could not play every day at the major league level. He was also playing Lew Ford over Mike. I was absolutely livid about that, of course. Mike has been tremendous out there in right field. He’s got a cannon of an arm and although he’s not the best at covering ground, he’s staying out there for the foreseeable future. Personally, I would never have moved him off of third base. Anyway, Mike is fourth in the AL in VORP. The list of right fielders with 500 plate appearances and a higher VORPr in right field looks like this: Jermaine Dye and Vladimir Guerrero. The other guy ahead of him (just barely) has 120 more plate appearances: Ichiro! And to think that Lew Ford was taking at bats away from him at the beginning of the season.
• The DH spot has been an unqualified disaster. Phil Nevin at -0.9 VORP is the leader at this position for the Twins. I personally think that Nevin, who has 207 career home runs and 21 this season could be at least a league average DH. But, no. He’s platooning (his OPS vs. right and left handed pitchers are nearly identical this season) with a guy with zero home runs in over 1000 major league at bats who is the very definition of a replacement level player. And since Tyner is left handed, he’s getting the lion’s share of the at bats. The Scrubini Fixation obviously rages unchecked.

Two years ago, Terry Ryan inked Johan Santana to a four year, $40 million contract. At the time, I was ecstatic. One Twins blogger was less enthusiastic, arguing that the Twins could have saved some risk by letting Santana work through the arbitration years, or something to that effect. (I won’t name names because I get in trouble when I do that. Besides, this guy has been a great blogger and I love his work. No, it’s not Gleeman.) However, I would ask if he’d like to see the Twins go to arbitration with Santana for the 2007 season as opposed to paying his $12,000,000 salary. Let’s see. 2004: Cy Young. 2005: 3rd in Cy Young (should have won it). 2006: Cy Young and MVP? Let’s start the process at what? $16,000,000? $18,000,000? I’d say the Santana contract has turned out quite well for the Twins. That being said, he had a point and it was good for him to express it at the time. That’s what makes this whole online community so great. Rather than just ingesting what the Strib has to say as gospel, people are talking about what’s going on and are actually THINKING FOR THEMSELVES.