In the current era of baseball it doesn't make sense to quantify pitchers as #X starter. It used to be that #1 or #2 starters would get more starts because they would skip over guys at the back end of the rotation. I think Verlander and the Tigers are the only team that did that with any consistency. Virtually all teams roll their starters so that all slots get about the same number of starts. Even when the opportunity at the all star break comes to skip some starts at the back end, those oppo
Baseball Prospectus has pitch framing data organized by battery. Framing data by battery The data looks at pitches where the umpire needs to make the call and compares actual strikes with predicted strikes. While looking at splits creates small sample sizes, I wondered if it would be clear that Josmil Pinto's framing skills are significantly worse than Kurt Suzuki. The natural place to start is Glenn Perkins. Chances Predicted Actual +/- Josmil Pint
The early ZIPS projections were reported midweek and the AL Central has sobering information for the Twins. http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/hotstove12/story/_/id/8599684/projecting-american-league-central-players-teams-2013-mlb Note: Unfortunately, you will need an insider account to access the link above. The Twins in their construction are projected for 66 wins and 5th place in the AL Central. Entering the 2012 season they had a projected 70 win team from ZIPS so in the ZIPS lens the Twi
Are we confident in the Twins handling and developing of Alex Meyer? Does he need more time in AAA? Should he have been called up last June? We don't really know what has prevented the Twins from calling up Alex Meyer. We speculate it is his walk rate. How unusual is it for a pitcher with his stuff to give up a lot of walks in AAA? How would other teams respond? Do all teams wait for their pitchers with good stuff to manage their walk rates? Here are some pitchers and their walks per 9 in
Steamer projections are available for 2016. Steamer uses the last three seasons of data to project the 2016 season. It is easy to write projections off as "guesses" but they are based on a significant amount of historical data. If interested you can read more about the various projection systems and rankings for 2014 here. Projected Twin starters with games started, ERA and their rank (compared to the 169 pitchers with 20 projected starts). I use ERA because it is projected performance that is
Jordan Schafer is at his 4th stop having moved from Atlanta to Houston to Atlanta prior to being claimed by Minnesota. He enters next season as a 28 year old with a significant 1398 plate appearances. Is there a chance that the once highly rated prospect can turn it around at age 28? Has it happened before? I used Baseball Reference's play index seeking an answer. I wanted a group of outfielders that had a similar number of plate appearances and performance through age 27. A group where Schafe
"I don’t say this about many decisions, but starting Doumit at catcher might be a fireable offense. In 60 games at catcher for Pittsburgh in 2011, his framing cost the Pirates 20 runs. In 59 games for Minnesota in 2012, his framing cost the Twins 21 runs. All told, his framing has subtracted 98 runs over the past five seasons, on top of the damage from the other things he does poorly behind the plate, which wipes out his offensive value." Ben Lindbergh, Baseball Prospectus Read the article a
Another post suggested the Twins flip Diamond for Hendriks if he doesn't turn it around by the end of the month. It has been on my mind as I listened to the Gardenhire show yesterday morning and the post game conference following the game. If Diamond is to get a handful more starts before flipping him for Hendriks, can he at least have a different catcher. Doumit doesn't catch often but he has caught 11 of 16 Diamond starts. Gardy quoted ERA as a reason. Hopefully someone in the organizat
The Twins have invested over 100 million dolars in their pitching rotation buying 8 seasons of starting pitching. What can they expect for their $100,000,000? I started with Ervin Santana looking for a similar group. From ages 27-31 he has performed at a 99 ERA+ with about 1000 innings pitched. I wondered how other groups of pitchers performed from ages 27-31. With the help of BR's play index, I searched for all pitchers since 1975 who have pitched at least 900 innings in their age 27 through
You have to be excited about Adam Brett Walker's performance in AA. He leads all AA players with an ISO of .312. This isn't new. He had the second best ISO in the Florida State League last year at .190. Where is all of the top prospect love? It is hard to get past his strike out rates. Not only does he lead all AA players in ISO but he also leads in strike out rate at 35.5%. Some look at the strike out rate and dismiss Walker as a prospect. Certainly major league pitchers would take better adv
As I read posts about the decisions the Twins have made and predictions about their roster, I wonder if they are in danger of entering a cycle of mediocrity. They have been there before, signing older players on the down side of their careers with the thought they would be the necessary difference in the coming season. Ultimately they were not and the Twins entered the following season with the same holes and questions. Of course there are many motivators for signing the veterans. Sometimes th
With the signings of Kubel, Bartlett and Guerrier, comments overwhelmingly went like these below. No risk? No impact on the 40 man roster? Alex Presley Brooks Raley Darin Mastroianni Signing decline phase players (even to minor league contracts) does have a risk. It kept the Twins from seeking other younger solutions. It invests playing time into players with no upside. It costs a few younger players on the 40 man roster who have a better long term shot at being a role
The Twins have been notoriously slow at moving pitchers through the system while they wait for consistency. I thought it might be interesting to see how some of other young pitchers moved through their systems. How about Yordano Ventura? Yordano Ventura and Alex Meyer both pitched in the Carolina League in 2012. Meyer started in low-A and arrived about the time Ventura was leaving. What was the Royals plan for Ventura? Did they wait for consistency? 2010- He started the year in the Dominican s
I thought and hoped this would be the year where the Twins would go with youth. I should have known better. The direction for the winter roster construction was made clear when they retained Josh Willingham last August. Earl Battey was the catcher when I first became a young Twin fan. I recall his western oil 8x10 card hanging my wall among other Twin heroes. Those years were great. I didn't know how lucky I was to follow a team that was competitive or at least entertaining every year. There h
The Twins signed to veteran back of the rotation starters last winter. Is it possible they might flip them in a midseason trade? Kevin Correia whose best skill might be his reliable health has performed at an ERA+ of 99 (essentially league average) this year. Mike Pelfrey is coming off injury and started poorly. He needs to put up a string of good starts in order to show that he is healthy. Neither player has a contract that is going to scare off a team. Earlier I look at previous LOOGY trad
This Twins team is not a playoff team. That shouldn't be a surprise. The over under 73 wins looks generous now. They are not 15 million dollars or a serviceable reliever away from 90 wins. At some point this season it will be time to invest playing time in the future in spite of the growing pains. As I chose a date to put in the headline, I tried to account for the "Super Two" arbitration deadline. There will be some players with 2+ years of service time that will be eligible for arbitration f
There are all kinds of questions surrounding whether the Twins should trade Santana. The market is a huge factor. Is it better to keep him given the limited options in or outside the organization? Is it better to trade him given the demand and supply? Will the demand be greater in July? My interest is exploring the likelihood that he will continue to be a valuable pitcher for the next three seasons that the Twins can control. I looked for a similar group of pitchers with a healthy track rec
One of the questions the Twins must be asking is whether Brian Dozier will retain his value. We have seen his streakiness in season, but season to season he has been pretty reliable. I do wonder if hitters with his characteristics (pull hitters, fly ball hitters, relatively high ISO, right handed) tend to be more streaky within season. On the other hand, slash stats don't stabilize short of a full season and really aren't very meaningful in splits. We shouldn't expect them to be reliable by th
My last blog topic on catcher defense was last November. The trade of Butera has prompted a revisit. Through July 26 while Ryan Doumit was catching, 46 out of zone balls were called strikes and 205 in zone strikes were called balls. They convert it to a ratio which for Doumit would be 0.22 extra strikes/lost strikes. That ratio is the worst in baseball and the next for a current catcher is twice the ratio at 0.44. The data is from Baseball Prospectus. How much difference does that make in te
Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) measures what a player’s ERA should have looked like over a given time period, assuming that performance on balls in play and timing were league average. Fangraphs relies on FIP to calculate WAR for pitchers. Is FIP independent of the catcher? The following table shows pitching performance by catcher over the last two seasons. [TABLE=width: 500] Catcher Inn K/BB FIP Joe Mauer 1286 2.32 4.32 Ryan Doumit 865 1.65 4.78 Drew Butera 307 2.53 3.80 C
I tried to study the impact of the batting order change using ZIPS projections. I was a little disappointed in the results. I used the average plate appearances by batting order position in the AL last year. The second spot had 103 more plate appearances on average than the 8th spot. That made sense as it is close to 6x18. I then compared a Dozier with 735 plate appearances to a Dozier with 632 plate appearances. (Yes... I know he is not going to play 162 games and neither are any of the oth
As Ervin Santana gets ready for his first start in Rochester, I wondered what the impact of his loss has been on the Twins thus far. Mike Pelfrey was his immediate replacement and he has certainly stepped up to the task. He has far outperformed what we might have expected from Santana. It isn't really fair to compare his performance to just Pelfrey though. I looked at the performance of Pelfrey, May and Milone. All three had opportunities that may not have been available had Santana not let do
I became interested in the Astudillo discussion in the resting players topic and wondered about Astudillo's use. I have been thinking about this since his critical hit against Matt Barnes in the Red Sox series. Matt Barnes is a right handed pitcher with the highest k/9 rate in the AL and nearly the highest AL k-rate at 38%. The Twins are tied with the Red Sox 1-1 in the 7th inning. Miguel Sano is in scoring position with two outs. The Twins have 1 hit through 6 2/3. Jonathan Schoop is coming t
Baker doesn't appear close to ready. Marquis is not in camp. Is it possible that both will not be in the rotation as the Twins break camp? Who is in line to get those starts? Any signs of the Twins stretching out some of the players pegged for a relief role? What is the succession order? Liam Hendriks Anthony Swarzak Brian Duensing Matt Maloney Jeff Manship Seth may be able to help with this... what is the projected starting rotation at Rochester? How close are PJ Walters and Luke French
Two topics that appeared in the forums led me to wonder which teams are getting the platoon advantage. How did the Indians do it? I look at their numbers and see a combined 6.1 WAR from Jan Gomes and Ryan Raburn. Those cheap additions will be the difference between contending for the wild card and being on the fringe. Francona has found a role for them to put up fantastic numbers. We also debated about how platooning might help the Twins. I wondered how often teams are getting the platoon
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
