The WGOM

You would think that as someone affiliated with Baseball Prospectus, he might actually care about what the numbers say about the situation, but he's apparently more interested in throwing some kind of tantrum.

I’m all in favor of front offices making decisions without excessive deference to the fan base. The truth of the matter is that most fans have other things on their minds than the inner workings of baseball.

But WTF?

As of this writing, the Twins are 3.5 games out of first in the AL Central. This despite the performances of the perpetually disappointing Mike Cuddyer, and the not disappointing but merely awful Livan Hernandez. Hernandez has posted an ERA of 5.31 for the year, and outside of the Metrodome, he’s pitched something like Jose Lima would if he were still in the bigs.

First off, this team is hardly perfect and focusing on Cuddyer and Livan looks a lot more like finding a scapegoat than some kind of rational analysis.

Second, Livan's home/road split (and I'm sure he's referring to ERA here) is completely useless information. In fact, it's worse than useless--it's anti-information. He's had 10 games on the road--10. His strikeout and walk rates are actually better on the road than they are at home. His HR rate is worse, but by something like a grand total of 2 HR. So it's a really freaking small sample size.

Here's what kills me--just slays me about stuff like this--what reason is there for Livan to be awful on the road? Is the food really that much better in Minnesota? Do the fumes from the turf give him a super-clutchness that allows him to strand more runners? Does the team charter flight kill his back so he can't pitch right? Maybe he needs his blanky and has forgotten to take it with him on the road?

But that's just it! There is no reason for Livan to have a huge home/road split. (Just like there's no reason that Craig Monroe should suddenly be great against right-handed pitchers, or there's no reason that Baker has been losing games where he's been allowing fewer runs, etc., etc., etc.) There's no reason for it, his peripherals are generally even across home/road, and it's a small sample. It's just random variation, but because someone publishes the split somewhere, Gary Huckabay is apparently going to take it way too freaking seriously.

And on top of that, it's basically irrelevant to his point. If we're going to take his road stats seriously, then Livan Hernandez is a 3.91 ERA pitcher at home, and the Twins should just juggle the rotation to keep him starting at home, because that's a better home ERA than Slowey and Perkins. But clearly Gary Huckabay does not endorse that point of view.

Meanwhile, down at AAA, Francisco Liriano, while the Twins are ostensibly in the thick of a pennant race, has posted an ERA of 0.26 over his last five starts, while demonstrating excellent velocity and command.

So, first off, ERA over five starts is worthless. (Not to mention his selectively chosen endpoints.) More anti-information. Excellent velocity and command? Maybe. I remember preseason reports that Liriano was already hitting 95+ MPH down in the Dominican Republic and he showed up at camp nowhere near that. And I doubt that Gary Huckabay has been attending the Red Wings game with his trusty radar gun in tow, or looking at some AAA PITCHf/x data. Gary Huckabay doesn't know that Liriano's velocity is back, and while his control has improved enough to limit walks in the International League, that's not the same thing as demonstrating "excellent command" as compared to major league pitchers.

He’s healthy, clearly ready to come back to the big club, and yet, he’ll be starting for Rochester tomorrow, in all probability, while the Twins hope they’re not trying to break a six game losing streak on the same day.

So Carmona vs. Baker means "in all probability" this Twins were going to lose today? That's bullshit, too. And whether or not the Twins are trying to break a losing streak is beside the point--if Liriano can help the Twins win games, he can help them win games whether they lost their last five or won their last five.

For the sake of asking your fans for patience and having them buy into some long-term goals, couldn’t you at least *pretend* to care about winning more than saving literally a few weeks off of Liriano’s service time clock?

Let me put this in big bold letters so that I'm clear on this point:

FRANCISCO LIRIANO IS NOT IN ROCHESTER BECAUSE THE TWINS ARE TRYING TO CONSERVE SERVICE TIME

Once more, for effect:

FRANCISCO LIRIANO IS NOT IN ROCHESTER BECAUSE THE TWINS ARE TRYING TO CONSERVE SERVICE TIME

Look at his clock, look at where super-two status usually falls--even if they ever cared about that (which he really has zero evidence of)--the Twins are already in the clear. Limiting Liriano's service time right now doesn't actually help the Twins.

Letting Hunter go was the right move. Fans get that.

Again, this has nothing to do with anything here. I also think that a lot of fans didn't get that letting Hunter go was the right move, but they've moved on by now because the Twins have been winning. I'm sure that if the Twins had been struggling this year, we would have heard about how much the Twins miss his leadership in the clubhouse and other such bullshit.

Letting a potential postseason appearance slip away on the vagaries of a few bucks and lots of fan loyalty is just outright ludicrous.

Is that just a poorly constructed sentence? I'm not even sure where fan loyalty comes into his point. He is fairly clearly implying that the Twins are significantly diminishing their chances of a postseason spot by leaving Liriano in Rochester, but if you do the math, that's just not the case.

Let's suppose that the Twins had incredible foresight and supernatural scouting abilities, and after back-to-back questionable starts on June 20th and 25th, the Twins decided that Liriano had really turned the corner and was ready to pitch for them again. How well could he reasonably be expected to pitch? Well, PECOTA had him forecasted for a 3.33 ERA this season. I would take the over on Liriano putting up a 3.33 ERA for the rest of the season, but I'll give Huckabay the benefit of the doubt here. PECOTA had Livan at a 5.78 ERA, which is pretty close to what he's done so far, though his actual ERA is lower and other projection systems had him a little lower. Again, I'll give Huckabay the benefit of the doubt here.

Give Liriano and Livan 6 innings per start. Had the Twins perfectly projected when Liriano would turn the corner (if he's even truly turned the corner), he would have been able to replace five starts, or about 30 innings pitched. So even if you go with Liriano at a 3.33 ERA and Livan at a 5.78 ERA, that's basically an 8-run difference. You can't even say with confidence that that's even going to get you an extra win.

I think it's probably more accurate to put them at about 4.00 and 5.50, which puts the difference down to a run per start. And yeah, that could make a difference, but it's small enough that "shit happens" will be a bigger factor in the Twins' postseason chances than the difference between Liriano and Livan over 5-8 starts. (And at this point, I think the Twins could only reasonably have snuck in an extra 2-3 Liriano starts.)

If Liriano really has turned a corner, he'll probably be up here in 1-3 starts or something, and then we'll re-realize that he's human, we'll win some of his starts and lose some of his starts. At the end of the season, maybe the Twins will come up a game or two short, and maybe we can point to this as a decision that made a 1-2 win difference, but we'll also be able to point to dozens of other things that made a 1-2 win difference. The Twins are erring on the side of caution here, and at this point, I'd lean towards judging them as being too cautious, but they are absolutely 100% not throwing away the season on this one decision. And as a Twins fan, I have as much hope for the playoffs today as I did on June 25th, Liriano or not.

Grow a pair.

Grow up.