Over at Beyond The Boxscore, Chris St John revealed a system for predicting major league success of minor leaguers based on prospect age and level. The system is called JAVIER (named after Cubs SS prospect Javier Baez), and you can read about it here. The system predicts whether a prospect will bust, have an average career, or be a productive player (defined as having at least 1000 MLB PAs and producing at least 0.0275 VORP per PA - read about VORP here), based on a dataset of 41,238 player-seas
Earlier this month, Teflon estimated the pitching staff would improve by 73 runs, driven mostly by the Twins free agent acquisitions. These runs would push the Twins' pythagorean win total to 70. Assuming that estimate is accurate, how many more runs would the lineup would need to plate in order to push their Pythagorean record all the way to 90? The answer is 188 runs. That's a lot of runs. To see if a 188-run offensive improvement had been done recently, I pulled the Runs Scored/Run allowed
Resuming where we left off, we're now going to compare the Twins' successes in the 6 methods of talent acquisition versus the rest of the American League. Part 1: here Part 2: here Data: here TWINS VS AMERICAN LEAGUE 1. Amateur Draft We already know the Twins have acquired the most positional talent and the 2nd most pitching talent from the Amateur draft, as measured by WAR. But roster space is limited. How does the average Amateur Draftee stack up against the rest of the AL? http://i.
In Part 1, we looked at the Twins history of acquiring positional talent via the Amateur Draft, Amateur Free Agency, the Rule 5 Draft, Trades, Waivers, and Free Agency, during the Terry Ryan era (1995-2013). Here we will do the same for pitchers. PITCHERS 1. Amateur Draft Since 1995, the Twins trail only the Toronto Blue Jays in their reliance on the Amateur Draft for pitching talent, getting 136 player-seasons from 39 pitchers, good for 120 WAR. Notably, Brad Radke owns a full third (45.5
Last Friday Terry Ryan spoke to Paul Allen about Free Agency: Free Agency is only one of the 6 most common methods of acquiring talent. The others are the Amateur Draft, Amateur Free Agency, Rule 5 Draft, Trades, and Waivers. Using Baseball-references Player registry data, I will examine the Twins' successes at acquiring positional talent via these 6 methods during the period 1995-2013 - the Terry Ryan era. (data here) POSITION PLAYERS The Amateur Draft Since 1995, the Twins have 194
Since 2006, 851 players have logged at least 200 PAs in the Florida State League (High A). This is a sample of players that includes guys like Giancarlo Stanton (age 19), Jay Bruce (20), JP Arencibia (22), Allen Craig (22), and Domonic Brown (21). Another 746 have logged at least 200 PAs in the Eastern League (AA) since 2006. Players include Brandon Belt (22), Matt Wieters (22), Pedro Alvarez (22), Ike Davis (22), Kevin Kouzmanoff (24), Josh Reddick (22), Carlos Santana (23), Brennan Boesch (2
As we're all aware, step 4 of the 21 Point Plan to More Twins Wins! is upon us. Step 4 of course is the first of a subseries of steps which looks at how the Twins AAAA bubble guys figure to fit into the next wave of All Star talent currently playing in Cedar Rapids and Ft Myers. Dozier, Hicks, Parmelee, Plouffe, Florimon, Gibson, Deduno, DeVries, and Hendriks. In Step 4, we isolate the position players. Smarter minds than I have calculated that the 150 PA plateau marks the point where we can s
Aaron Hicks has struck out 22 times in his first 17 big league games. His K-rate currently sits at 31.4%, tied for 10th worst in baseball with jay Bruce. a career 23.7% k-rate batter. According to Charlie Adams at Beyond the Boxscore (courtesy of Pizza Cutter at StatSpeak.net) k-rates stabilize after about 150 PAs. But instead of waiting 20 more games for Hicks to reach that benchmark, I'm going to instead look at contact rate and guesstimate what Hicks' true k-rate might be based off that. Be
It was pretty obvious that Oswalt struggled as a starter down in Texas last year, earning him a couple different assignments to the bullpen. I went through his pitchf/x data for the season to differentiate Oswalt's effectiveness in the two roles and found some evidence that he could still be a valuable piece coming out of the pen in 2013. In a small sample, Oswalt's fastballs missed bats about twice as often when he was coming out of relief (15.93% versus 8.39%). I believe this is a good sign fo
I'm revisiting this topic after the Case for Trading Span thread discussion. I believe that Revere's extreme contact proficiency is causing him to prematurely terminate at-bats to the detriment of his OBP. Here I want to estimate what Revere's OBP would be if he never swung at another 2-0, 3-0, or 3-1 pitch again by looking at the probabilities of outcomes based on Revere's first 1068 PAs. For data, I'm using fangraphs' PITCHf/x Plate Discipline, and Baseball-Reference's Pitch Summary -- Bat
Ben Revere doesn't swing and miss often. So he doesn't reach many 3 ball counts, and what follows below can be taken with heavy salt. Still, if there is meaning in his small sample of 3-ball data, then Ben Revere's high contact percentage allows for absolutist decisionmaking at the plate in order to maximize on-base percentage. Observe, Ben Revere is already a patient hitter: http://i.imgur.com/tJLMP.png But Revere puts balls in play at such an efficient clip, relative to the no. of sw
Over the last three seasons, (min 450 IP), Jeremy Hellickson has accumulated 6.8 Fielding dependent wins. FDP wins are calculated based on a pitchers combined ability to limit hard contact on balls in play and strand runners ie. throw strikes from the stretch, limit the running game, etc. Hellickson's 6.8 FDP wins leads all qualified pitchers, by far. Next closest is Jared Weaver, at 5.4 FDP wins. Which brings me to Deduno, who in 10 starts has already accumulate 1.0 FDP-wins. 0.3 of which i
I really hold back what I would like to say about then payroll arguments here. The fact that people don't accept the amount taken in dictates the amount going out requires one of two things. Extreme financial ignorance or fanatical bias that prevents the acceptance of something some basic. I did not change the argument. It's the same idiocy over and over. Do you really want to be on the side that suggests revenues does not determine spending capacity?
At this point in the pre-season, I’m just so happy to be seeing games again, I don’t care about the Twins record in 2023. I think they’ll win it all, unrealistically speaking 🙂
I really hold back what I would like to say about then payroll arguments here. The fact that people don't accept the amount taken in dictates the amount going out requires one of two things. Extreme financial ignorance or fanatical bias that prevents the acceptance of something some basic. I did not change the argument. It's the same idiocy over and over. Do you really want to be on the side that suggests revenues does not determine spending capacity?· 0 replies
