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2008 Minnesota Twins Game 110: Cleveland at Minnesota

SBG August 2, 2008, at 5:00 pm 110 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , ,

[Note: our guy ubelmann is taking a break from posting game logs at the WGOM for a while. He's got family in town and for some reason he thinks that's more important than communicating his thoughts to you about this game. The nerve, I tell ya! So, I'm filling for him.]

Game 110: Cleveland at Minnesota
Game Time: 6:10 PM CDT
Scheduled Starters: Paul Byrd (21st start, 115 IP, 4.87 xFIP) v. Kevin Slowey (17th Start, 96.7 IP, 4.20 xFIP). What is xFIP?

What a difference a year makes. Last year, Cleveland roared to a Central Division title and beat up the Twins in the process. Cleveland was 14-4 head-to-head against our favorite squad and they outperformed their Pythagorean number by five wins on their way to 96 wins and the best record in all of baseball. This overperformance in terms of the Pythagorean number was a marked changed for an Eric Wedge managed Cleveland club. In the four previous seasons, Wedge's clubs had never overperformed their Pythag number and in fact had underperformed by an average of 5 wins a season, including a ridiculous 11 win underperformance in 2006. I don't know if there's a managerial element that can be traced to a team's performance vis-a-vis their Pythag number, but I found it curious that Cleveland was significantly underperforming. Well, anyways, there was Cleveland, overperforming in 2007 and getting to the brink of the World Series before folding in the ALCS.

Flash forward to 2008. The Indians are a mess, currently sitting in last place in the AL Central at 47-61 and underperforming their Pythag number by 7 wins. At 54-54 they wouldn't really be in the race, but you can bet that they wouldn't have sold off cc: Sabathia, either. Plus, it should be noted that the Twins are returning the beatings from last year. They currently hold an 8-4 edge in the head-to-head matchups. I certainly would enjoy a 14-4 record by season's end.

In a sense, it's probably better to flop than to chug along in mediocrity, especially given the situation they were facing with cc:. Rather than ride him out until the end of the season, they got a package of four prospects from the Brewers, who hope like Hell that they are going to make the playoffs this year, because it's going to be a long cold winter in Milwaukee after Ben Sheets and cc: file for free agency. Of course, Indians fans probably don't agree, but as we've talked about before, they are used to disappointment.

As for tonight, the Twins face Byrd, who credits Bert Blyleven for helping him with his slider grip (h/t Gleeman). I don't know when the Blyleven-type tutorial occurred, but I'm not all that scared of Mr. Byrd. The Twins have had pretty good success against him over the last couple of years, even though he did shut them out last year. This year, the Twins have hit 4 home runs off of Byrd and scored 13 runs in 15 1/3 innings. There was one pretty good outing for Byrd in there, but a soft throwing righty like Byrd should be like read meat to this Twins lineup right about now.

Game 98: Rangers at Twins

ubelmann July 20, 2008, at 11:00 am 135 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , , , ,

Padilla vs. Light Rail

So far this season, Baker has gotten 84% of his strikeouts as strikeouts swinging. That caught me by surprise. Santana, who got a ton of swinging strikeouts when his change-up dropped off the table, has 82% of his career strikeouts as strikeouts swinging. Average is 74% of strikeouts as strikeouts swinging.

Having looked around a bit, it's kind of difficult (though certainly not impossible) to find pitchers with a ratio that high. I thought maybe Randy Johnson, and he's at 82% this year, but that's a career high, and he's at 74% for his career. Pedro gets to 80-81% sometimes. Tim Wakefield is at 81% for his career, though obviously he's a much different pitcher than Baker.

Radke had a couple of seasons where he didn't get many called strikeouts--90% swinging K's in 2003--and overall was 78% for his career. This made me wonder if it was a control pitcher thing, but then Greg Maddux has just 62% of his career strikeouts as swinging strikeouts. Paul Byrd's at 74% for his career, but is up to 82% this year.

Part of it might be that Baker doesn't go to three ball counts very often. With two strikes on a hitter and fewer than three balls, he's probably more inclined to swing to protect the plate than he is to sit on a borderline pitch, hoping to get the walk--there's a lot more reward in that fourth ball than in the third ball.

Anyway, I'm not sure it's a significant thing, but it's a thing--Baker gets a lot of his strikeouts by making hitters flail and miss (especially at his slider.)

Delmon's hit parade: It's been nice to see Delmon's surge here, but he just now got his SLG over .400 and even if you focus on his stats since June 1st, his power has been short of what PECOTA forecasted. Thankfully, it now seems plausible that Delmon could be an above average corner outfielder some day, but he still has his some work to do.

Game 86: Tribe vs. Twins — Independence Day

ubelmann July 4, 2008, at 5:00 pm 91 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , ,

Byrd v. Livan

Both starting pitchers today have managed to limit their walks allowed quite well, while at the same time being overall crappy pitchers. But some offensive fireworks would be rather appropriate for Independence Day, don't you think?

Game 66: Twins at Cleveland

ubelmann June 11, 2008, at 5:00 pm 215 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , ,

Nick Blackburn vs. Paul Byrd

After game 59, the Twins were "on pace" for about 85 wins. Today they are "on pace" for about 77 wins. Ignoring for a moment that that's not a very good way to project forward a team's final record, this hasn't been a very fun stretch, has it?

But let's put all that aside--it's a special day today! In honor of this day, I have a comparison!

.236/.303/.388 -- Player A
.230/.269/.311 -- Player B

.602 RZR -- Player A
.596 RZR -- Player B

32 years old -- Player A
32 years old -- Player B

92 -- Player A, career OPS+
94 -- Player B, career OPS+

Today, of course, is the 2-year anniversary of Tony Batista's last appearance for the Twins. If Mike Lamb (Player B) was fat and played in Japan last year, he'd probably be getting the Tony Batista (Player A) treatment right about now. But he's not fat, and third base is still an organizational weakness for the Twins, so he'll probably stick around as a platoon player and continue to make outs and hit for no power like it's 1969 all over again, all while playing awful defense at third base.

Eyeballing between the 10th and 25th percentile PECOTA forecasts for Lamb, PECOTA estimated that there was about a 15% chance that this would happen to Lamb. And on a 25-man roster, you're probably going to have 3 or 4 guys do worse than their 15th percentile projection. It's not like he's been super unlucky with balls-in-play, either--his PrOPS of .647 still sucks. Waiting for Lamb to turn it around is probably a lost cause.